Health

Prof. Giovanni Traverso speaks with GBH’s “All Things Considered” host Arun Rath about his work developing new approaches to weight loss treatments that don’t involve surgery or pharmaceuticals. “Our team does a lot of work on ingestible systems, ingestible capsules that can do many things,” says Traverso. “You know, we recognize that we live now in a world where we have really incredible therapies that are very effective for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. But we also recognize that they’re not for everybody. There are people who have side effects, people who can’t take them, so these are certainly alternatives, or potentially synergistic interventions, that could work together either with those drugs or, as I was mentioning, for folks that have side effects from the drugs.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a new type of dynamic gastric balloon that inflates on demand and could be used to help patients feel more full before meals, reports Margherita Bassi for Gizmodo. The engineers have “designed a potential future alternative for patients who, for any number of reasons, cannot treat obesity through medications or invasive surgeries such as gastric bypass surgery or stapling,” writes Bassi. 

Boston Business Journal reporter Hannah Green spotlights the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative, a new effort designed to connect researchers, medical professionals, and industry leaders in a shared mission to address some of the most pressing health challenges of our time. Green notes that the collaborative aims to “spur high-impact discoveries and health solutions through interdisciplinary projects across engineering, science, AI, economics, business, policy, design, and the humanities.” 

Professor Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues have developed a new gastric balloon that can be inflated and deflated to mimic feeling full. Unlike traditional gastric balloons, which are one size, the new version is “connected to an external control device that can be attached to the skin and contains a pump that inflates and deflates the balloon when needed,” writes Ernie Mundell for HealthDay. 

MIT researchers have developed a gastric balloon that can inflate before eating and contract afterwards in an effort to ensure the body does not grow accustomed to the balloon, reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian. “What we try to do here is, in essence, simulate the mechanical effects of having a meal,” explains Prof. Giovanni Traverso. “What we want to avoid is getting used to that balloon." 

Inspired by his daily walks, Prof. Elfatih Eltahir and his colleagues have developed a new way to measure how climate change is likely to impact the number of days when it is comfortable to be outdoors, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. “I find people walking, jogging, cycling and enjoying the outdoors,” says Eltahir. “That's what motivated me to start looking at how climate change could really constrain some of those activities.”

Researchers at MIT have found that “more than 98% of prisons in the United States experienced at least ten days that were hotter than every previous summer, with the worst of the heat-exposed prisons concentrated in the Southwest,” reports Minnah Arshad for USA Today. s

MIT researchers developed a new method to model how climate change will impact the number of “outdoor days” and found that Southern states in the U.S. will lose a significant number of outdoor days, reports Kristin Toussaint for Fast Company. Prof. Elfatih Eltahir explains that the concept of outdoor days is, “an attempt for me to bring the issue of climate change home. When someone tells you global temperatures are going to increase by 3 degrees, that’s one thing. If someone tells you that your outdoor days will be dropping by 20% or 30%, that’s another thing.”

A new commentary by Prof. Jonathan Gruber and his colleagues outlines a proposal for a new long-term care at home plan, aimed at enabling seniors to stay in their homes, reports Jonathan Cohn for HuffPost. “Relative to other countries, we’re very nursing home focused, and we’re not really doing enough to keep people at home,” says Gruber. “I also just think it’s a valuable benefit to people that makes their lives better.” 

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.”

Writing for Forbes, lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08, SM '16, MBA '16 explores the role of artificial intelligence and biotechnology in transforming the healthcare industry specifically for venture capitalists (VCs). “The fusion of AI and biotechnology presents a wealth of opportunities for venture capitalists,” writes Hayes-Mota. “By staying attuned to emerging trends and adopting strategies for impactful investments, VCs can drive innovation and create transformative changes in healthcare.” 

Prof. Regina Barzilay spoke at The Futurist Summit: The Age of AI – an event hosted by The Washington Post – about the influence of AI in medicine. “When we're thinking today how many years it takes to bring new technologies [to market], sometimes it's decades if we’re thinking about drugs, and very, very slow,” Barzilay explains. “With AI technologies, you've seen how fast the technology that you're using today is changing.”

Prof. Bob Langer and Prof. Giovanni Traverso have co-founded Syntis Bio, a biotech company that will use technology to “coat the stomach and potentially other organ surfaces, [change] the way that drugs are absorbed or, in the case of obesity, which hormones are triggered,” reports Allison DeAngelis for STAT.