Prof. Deblina Sarkar speaks with Bloomberg Businessweek Daily reporters Carol Massar and David Gura about her work using microscopic technology to treat and identify health issues. We are building “tiny nanoelectronics chips which can seamlessly integrate with our body and brain,” says Sarkar. “This can diagnose disease or treat diseases which even drugs cannot fix.”
Boston Business Journal reporter Grant Welker spotlights Biogen's groundbreaking ceremony for its new headquarters in MIT’s Kendall Common development. "This area is the most perfect place to do it, because you have some of the highest levels of ingenuity, innovation and energy around the biotech industry, and not to mention partnerships with academic excellence," said Nicole Murphy, Biogen’s executive vice president for pharmaceutical operations and technology." It was absolutely critical to why we feel we want to be here."
Earlier this week, Biogen celebrated the groundbreaking for the company’s new headquarters in MIT’s Kendall Common development, reports Catherine Carlock for The Boston Globe. “When a company as influential as Biogen breaks ground on the new global headquarters, it is an unmistakable vote of confidence — confidence in Massachusetts, confidence in Cambridge, and confidence in Kendall Square, and confidence in the future," said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “It is on us, on us in Massachusetts, to find new ways to make sure this amazing ecosystem can maintain its record of trailblazing science and transformative treatments and cures.”
Biogen will move its headquarters to a new facility at 75 Broadway in MIT’s Kendall Common development, reports Greg Ryan and Hannah Green for the Boston Business Journal. “The lease is one of the most significant life sciences real estate transactions in Greater Boston,” they write.
Biogen will move its headquarters to MIT’s Kendall Common development in 2028, reports Catherine Carlock and Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe. “Biogen has been a foundational presence in the Massachusetts life science ecosystem for close to half a century,” says Governor Maura Healey. “We are thrilled to see them begin a new era in our state.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Pierre Azoulay and Prof. Jeffrey Flier of Harvard Medical School make the case that any reforms at the NIH “should be grounded in evidence rather than tradition, avoiding the influence of special interests or political considerations.” They add that this approach “is an acknowledgement of NIH’s accomplishments and a charge to adapt it to the new realities of 21st-century science. The overarching goal must be to secure and enhance the decades-long role of the United States at the forefront of biomedical research, an outcome that the public both wants and deserves.”
WCVB-TV's Chronicle spotlights Prof. Linda Griffith, “a forerunner in the field of biological engineering,” for her research investigating endometriosis and breaking the stigma around menstruation. Griffith founded the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research in 2009 and “one of their objectives is to help develop ways of staging endometriosis, similar to how cancer is characterized.” Griffith notes that by focusing on menstruation and making it a science, “I think we will really change the game for women.
The Boston Globe’s Angelina Parrillo interviews Jasmina Aganovic ’09 about her beauty company Arcaea, which reconstructs data from extinct flowers to produce fragrances. “I viewed fragrance as this remarkable emotional storytelling category and people don’t view science as being associated with creativity, emotion, or storytelling,” Aganovic says. “I think that that’s very far from the truth.”
The Engine Ventures' CEO and Managing partner Katie Rae talks to Forbes’ Alex Knapp about its recent round of fundraising for investments in startups focused on sustainability, health and infrastructure. Rae also sees opportunities in quantum computing and other new hardware, saying “power and climate and compute all go together.”
Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of the Engine Ventures, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman about The Engine Ventures’ third investment fund, which remains focused on “helping early-stage startups develop and commercialize ‘tough tech,’ which can include anything from fusion power generators to cement made without fossil fuels.” Rae notes: “You see this dynamism not just for climate, but for all things manufacturing, whether it’s biotech, whether it’s AI chips, it is about as an exciting moment as you could get for what we do.”
Forbes selects innovators for the list’s Healthcare & Science category, written by senior contributor Yue Wang. On the list is MIT PhD candidate Yuzhe Yang, who studies AI and machine learning technologies capability to monitor and diagnose illnesses such as Parkinson's disease.
Writing for STAT, Prof. Kevin Esvelt explores how, “the immense potential benefits of biotechnology are profoundly vulnerable to misuse. A pandemic caused by a virus made from synthetic DNA — or even a lesser instance of synthetic bioterrorism — would not only generate a public health crisis but also trigger crippling restrictions on research.” Esvelt adds: “The world has too much to gain from the life sciences to continue letting just anyone obtain DNA sufficient to cause a pandemic.”
Prof. Linda Griffith and Stuart Orkin '67 were named to this year’s Time 100 Health list, which recognizes innovators leading the way to new health solutions. Griffith, who was honored for her work engineering a uterine organoid to study endometriosis, explains that in the future engineered organoids could be used to find the most effective treatments for patients. “We have all the genetic information and all the information from the patient’s exposure to infections, environmental chemicals, and stress that would cause the tissues to become deranged in some way, all captured in that organoid,” Griffith explains.
ShareAmerica reporter Lauren Monsen spotlights Prof. Dina Katabi for her work in advancing medicine with artificial intelligence. “Katabi develops AI tools to monitor patients’ breathing patterns, hear rate, sleep quality, and movements,” writes Monsen. “This data informs treatment for patients with diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s, and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), as well as Rett syndrome, a rare neurological disorder.”
MIT researchers have developed a new type of spring-like device that uses a flexible element to help power biohybrid robots, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The muscle fiber/flexure system can be applied to various kinds of robots in different sizes,” Heater writes, adding that the researchers are, “focused on creating extremely small robots that could one day operate inside the body to perform minimally invasive procedures.”