Drug development

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.”

Using AI, researchers at MIT have developed new antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA, two infections that are typically hard to treat. The team “trained the AI to help it learn how bacteria was affected by different molecular structures built of atoms in order to design new antibiotics,” writes Ruth Stainer for the Daily Mail. “[A]nything too similar to the current antibiotics available, or with the potential to be toxic to human beings, was eradicated.” 

Researchers at MIT used AI to “design antibiotics that can tackle hard-to-treat infections gonorrhoea and MRSA,” reports ITV News. "Our work shows the power of AI from a drug design standpoint, and enables us to exploit much larger chemical spaces that were previously inaccessible,” says Prof. James Collins. 

Using generative AI, researchers at MT have designed new antibiotics to combat MRSA and gonorrhea, reports James Gallagher for the BBC. "We're excited because we show that generative AI can be used to design completely new antibiotics," says Prof. James Collins. "AI can enable us to come up with molecules, cheaply and quickly and in this way, expand our arsenal, and really give us a leg up in the battle of our wits against the genes of superbugs."

Strand Therapeutics, co-founded Jake Becraft PhD '19, has developed a programmable drug that could one day shrink tumors in cancer patients, reports Amy Feldman for Forbes. “It shocked even us,” says Becraft. “You hope something happens, but you don’t expect to see a huge response because these patients have already proven to have cancers so resistant to treatment.” 

Researchers at MIT have developed a new HIV vaccine that could offer “strong protection with just one injection,” reports Ian Randall for Newsweek. “The vaccine includes two ‘adjuvants’—materials that help stimulate the immune system response,” explains Randall. “In the experiments, the dual-adjuvant vaccine was found to produce a wider diversity of antibodies to protect against an HIV protein than with either single adjuvant or none at all.” 

In a new paper, Prof. Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues highlight the results of a clinical trial that showed “a pill taken just once a week, gradually releasing medicine from within the stomach, can greatly simplify the drug schedule faced by schizophrenia patients,” writes Dennis Thompson for HealthDay News. “These final-stage clinical trial results are the product of more than 10 years of research by Traverso’s lab.” 

MIT researchers have developed Boltz-2, an AI algorithm “that unites protein folding and prediction of small-molecule binding affinity in one package,” reports Laura Howes for Chemical & Engineering News. “The researchers say their new AI model approaches the level of accuracy achieved by traditional computational chemistry—such as methods involving free-energy perturbation calculations—but much more quickly and cheaply,” explains Howes. 

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed Boltz-2, an open-source generative AI model that can help researchers find new medicines faster, reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. The tool “can not only predict the structure of proteins, it can also predict its binding affinity–that is, how well a potential drug is able to interact with that protein,” explains Knapp. “This is crucial in the early stages of developing a new medicine.” 

Wall Street Journal reporter Dominique Mosbergen spotlights how Prof. James Collins and his lab have built their “own algorithms to trawl chemical databases, such as those of existing pharmaceutical drugs, for potential antibacterial compounds.” Collins’ His lab is “also experimenting with using generative AI to design completely new molecules that could kill bacteria,” writes Mosbergen. 

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 Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08 MS '16, MBA '16 explores the challenges, opportunities and future of AI-driven drug development. “I see the opportunities for AI in drug development as vast and transformative,”  writes Hayes-Mota. “AI can help potentially uncover new drug candidates that would have been impossible to find through traditional methods.”

New Yorker reporter Dhruv Khullar spotlights how researchers from across MIT are using AI to advance drug development. Khullar highlights the MIT Jameel Clinic, the Broad Institute and various faculty members for their efforts in bridging the gap between AI and drug research. “With AI, we’re getting that much more efficient at finding molecules—and in some cases creating them,” says Prof. James Collins. “The cost of the search is going down. Now we really don’t have an excuse.”