A new study by MIT researchers provides evidence that glaucoma may be caused by an autoimmune disease, according to a HealthDay News piece published by UPI. “Further research will try to determine whether other parts of the immune system play a role in glaucoma, and whether autoimmunity is a factor in degenerative brain diseases.”
Prof. Aviv Regev speaks with WBUR’s Karen Weintraub about her work exploring human cells. Regev says she was inspired to study the human cell as, “it’s this phenomenal entity that knows how to take many different pieces of information, make very quick and sophisticated decisions, act on them and continue on its way.”
STAT reporter Justin Chen writes about a new study that examines why patients with pancreatic cancer often experience significant weight loss. Prof. Matt Vander Heiden explains that the findings show, “pancreatic cancer patients clearly have a lot of tissue wasting and whether it’s good or bad, we can now say that it’s not necessarily bad at diagnosis.”
Yahoo! reporter Elise Solé highlights how Alejandra Falla successfully completed her PhD studies at MIT while pregnant with her daughter, Clara. Clara sported a miniature MIT regalia to Commencement. “It started as a joke but we decided that Clara had earned her Ph.D. in the womb,” says Falla. “She deserved to graduate with me.”
A new paper co-authored by Prof. Omer Yilmaz and Prof. David Sabatini found that fasting substantially “improves stem cells' ability to regenerate,” reports Xinhua. The researchers hope this finding could lead to new drug treatments that “stimulate regeneration without requiring patients to fast, which is difficult for most people.”
Researchers at the Tangible Media Group have developed “programmable droplets” of water that can be used to communicate words. “One potential application is a mirror that, when steamed, allows someone to display a message from a smartphone” writes Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. “The larger idea is to provoke surprise and delight, the way only the natural world can.”
James Gallagher of BBC News speaks with several experts about the microbiome and how diversity in gut bacteria is essential to health. “One thing that we're learning is, based on the microbiome, different people may need to consume different diets in order to get the same effect,” says Prof. Eric Alm.
Assistant Prof. Canan Dagdeviren speaks with Charles Q. Choi of The Atlantic about developing an implantable device that can produce electricity from internal movements of the muscles and organs. As the movements generate what is known as piezoelectricity, the implant can “run biomedical devices like cardiac pacemakers instead of changing them every six or seven years when their batteries are depleted,” Dagdeviren explains.
New research from MIT and the Whitehead Institute suggests that “the body’s own mechanism for healing” may cause cancerous cells to spread after breast cancer-related surgeries, reports Karen Weintraub for WBUR CommonHealth. “The post-surgical wound-healing response somehow releases…cells that have already spread to distant sites in the body,” explains Prof. Robert Weinberg, “releasing them from the constraints that have previously prevented them from growing actively.”
Synlogic, founded by Prof. Jim Collins and Associate Prof. Tim Lu, is programming probiotic bacteria to treat certain genetic or acquired metabolic disease, reports Robin Seaton Jefferson for Forbes. One product is used for people whose bodies can’t maintain a healthy level of ammonia and “has been specifically engineered to convert the excess ammonia to a harmless metabolite,” explains Seaton Jefferson.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Elise Takahama describes new research by MIT’s Sukrit Ranjan and colleagues that suggests sulfudic anion molecules provide evidence for the origins of life. Takahama also highlights the varying disciplines in the research team, which joined molecular chemistry experts with planetary scientists. “One of the most exciting things,” says Ranjan, is “how different communities, when they talk to each other, can really make dramatic advances.”
The Koch Institute has chosen 10 new scientific images from MIT researchers to display in a public gallery in its lobby. The images “span a range of subject matters and approaches, capturing both fundamental biology and how that biology is upended by disease processes,” writes Lisa Raffensperger of STAT.
MIT researchers have discovered a new family of viruses in the ocean that appears to play a key role in ocean ecosystems and could help provide insights on how viruses evolve, reports Marin Finucane for The Boston Globe. Finucane explains that the findings could also lead to, "a better understanding of human biology.”
Boston Magazine reporter Hayley Glatter spotlights how two MIT seniors - Mary Clare Beytagh and Matthew Chun - were among this year’s winners of the Rhodes Scholarship.
Boston Globe reporter Alyssa Meyers writes that MIT researchers have observed how the flu spreads between cells in the body. “Once it’s infected a cell and has commandeered its inner workings, the virus makes copies of itself that gather into buds attached to the membrane. The buds then break free from their host and go on to infect other cells.”