Wired reporter Will Knight spotlights how MIT researchers built a machine learning system that can help predict which patients are most likely to develop breast cancer. “What the AI tools are doing is they're extracting information that my eye and my brain can't,” says Constance Lehman, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and division chief of breast imaging at MGH.
TechCrunch reporter Jonathan Shieber spotlights Senti Biosciences, an MIT startup, which is developing cancer therapies using a new programmable biology platform. “The company’s technology uses new computational biological techniques to manufacture cell and gene therapies that can more precisely target specific cells in the body,” Shieber explains.
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has awarded Prof. Regina Barzilay a $1 million prize for her work advancing the use of AI in medicine, reports John McCormick for The Wall Street Journal. "Regina is brilliant, has very high standards, and is committed to helping others,” says Prof. James Collins. “And I think her experience with—her personal experience with cancer—has motivated her to apply her intellectual talents to using AI to advance health care.”
The AP highlights how Prof. Regina Barzilay has been named the inaugural winner of a new award given by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence for her work “using computer science to detect cancer and discover new drugs has won a new $1 million award for artificial intelligence.”
Prof. Regina Barzilay has been named the inaugural recipient of the Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence to Benefit Humanity for her work developing new AI techniques to help improve health care, reports Rebecca Robbins for STAT. Robbins writes that Barzilay is focused on turning the “abundance of research on AI in health care into tools that can improve care.”
Third-year student Emily Rabinovitsj speaks with Boston Globe correspondent Mike Kotsopoulos about her quest to complete the virtual Boston Marathon and raise funds for 15-40 Connection, a non-profit dedicated to educating people on how to detect early-stage cancer. “I got this gift of being able to have a full life after a diagnosis and I feel like I have a responsibility to take advantage of that opportunity and help others have this same opportunity,” Rabinovitsj said.
MIT researchers have developed a skin patch that could be used to fight melanoma, reports Berkeley Lovelace Jr. for CNBC. “Our patch technology could be used to deliver vaccines to combat different infectious diseases,” explains Prof. Paula Hammond. “But we are excited by the possibility that the patch is another tool in the oncologists’ arsenal against cancer, specifically melanoma.”
MIT alumnus and philanthropist David Koch has died, reports Steve Peoples and Jennifer Peltz for the Associated Press. Koch was an ardent supporter of cancer research and “donated $100 million in 2007 to create a cancer research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
CNN reporter Nell Lewis spotlights how MIT researchers have developed an algorithm that can help predict from a mammogram a patient’s risk of developing breast cancer. “In the early stages cancer is a treatable disease,” says Barzilay. “If we can identify many more women early enough, and either prevent their disease or treat them at the earliest stages, this will make a huge difference.”
A new AI prediction model developed at MIT could detect breast cancer up to five years in advance. The researchers hope this technique “can also be used to improve detection of other diseases that have similar problems with existing risk models, with far too many gaps and lower degrees of accuracy,” writes Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch.
Researchers at MIT have “identified a molecule that can glue a cell-killing chemical to cancerous tissue,” reports Xinhua. This finding could ultimately “play a part in developing a low-toxicity cancer therapy.”
Broad Institute postdoctoral associate Joshua Weinstein has developed a DNA microscope that allows researchers to investigate the locations and identity of DNA molecules, reports Sharon Begley for STAT. “Weinstein has so far used it to image human cancer cell lines and plans to apply the technology to tumors and the immune cells that infiltrate them,” writes Begley, “which might one day guide immunotherapy.”
Writing for the Financial Times about how technology is advancing the field of health care, John Browne spotlights Prof. Bob Langer’s work developing new methods of delivering drugs with improved precision. Browne explains that Langer is working on “a device smaller than a grain of rice that he can inject into a tumour to test the efficacy of dozens of chemotherapy agents in parallel.”
In an excerpt from her new book published in The Wall Street Journal, President Emerita Susan Hockfield explores how the convergence between biology and engineering is driving the development of new tools to tackle pressing human problems. Hockfield writes that for these world-changing technologies to be realized requires “not only funding and institutional support but, more fundamentally, a commitment to collaboration among unlikely partners.”
President Emerita Susan Hockfield speaks with Jim Braude of WGBH’s Greater Boston about her book, “The Age of Living Machines.” “We are looking at a population of over 9.7 billion by 2050,” explains Hockfield. “We are not going to get there without war or epidemics or starvation if we don’t develop technologies that will allow us to provide energy, food, water, health and health care sustainably.”