Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES)

Scientific American reporter Payal Dhar spotlights how MIT engineers developed a beating, biorobotic replica of the human heart that could be used to “simulate the workings of both a healthy organ and a diseased one.” The replica, "which pumps a clear fluid instead of blood, is hooked up to instruments that measure blood flow, blood pressure, and more," writes Dhar. "It’s also customizable: the user can change the heart rate, blood pressure and other parameters, then watch how these changes affect the heart’s function in real time.”

In a new paper, MIT researchers detail how they have used AI techniques to discover a class of “of antibiotics capable of killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),” reports Helen Floresh for Fierce Biotech. “This paper announces the first AI-driven discovery of a new class of small molecule antibiotics capable of addressing antibiotic resistance, and one of the few to have been discovered overall in the past 60 years,” says postdoctoral fellow Felix Wong.

Researchers at MIT have used artificial intelligence to uncover, “a new class of antibiotics that can treat infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria,” reports Jeremy Hsu for New Scientist. “Our [AI] models tell us not only which compounds have selective antibiotic activity, but also why, in terms of their chemical structure,” says postdoctoral fellow Felix Wong.

7 News spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new implantable device that could provide diabetes patients with insulin without using injections. “What we’ve been able to show is that with a minimally invasive implant that is sitting just under the skin, we’ve actually been able to sort of achieve a diabetic reversal,” explains Research Scientist Siddharth Krishnan.

Gizmodo reporter Ed Cara writes that MIT researchers have developed a new implantable device that can produce its own supply of insulin for up to a month. The team envisions that the device could “eventually be used for other medical conditions dependent on a regular supply of externally produced proteins, such as certain forms of anemia treated with erythropoietin,” writes Cara.

Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with The Economist about how AI can help advance medicine in areas such as uncovering new drugs. With AI, “the type of questions that we will be asking will be very different from what we’re asking today,” says Barzilay.

MIT researchers have developed a new implant that in the future could be used to deliver insulin to patients for up to a month, potentially enabling patients to control diabetes without injections, reports Tony Ho Tran for the Daily Beast. In the future, the researchers hope to “develop a device for humans that would be roughly the size of a stick of gum,” writes Tran. “The implant could also be used to deliver things like drugs or proteins to help treat other diseases in humans as well.”

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have used artificial intelligence to develop a new antibiotic to combat Acinetobacter baumannii, a challenging bacteria known to become resistant to antibiotics, reports Hannah Kuchler for the Financial Times. “It took just an hour and a half — a long lunch — for the AI to serve up a potential new antibiotic, an offering to a world contending with the rise of so-called superbugs: bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that have mutated and no longer respond to the drugs we have available,” writes Kuchler.

A new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that journals and academic papers should be evaluated using a “diversity factor,” a metric aimed at improving representation across research, reports Patrick Jack for Times Higher Education. Jack notes that the researchers see the diversity factor as a “‘call to action’ for improved representation and to prevent the perpetuation of biases against certain subgroups.”

Prof. Lonnie Petersen speaks with Boston Globe reporter Kay Lazar about the need to prepare doctors to provide medical care in space. “As we have more commercial space flight, we will have a different composition of crew members, we will see more preexisting conditions, the age range will expand, and obviously the way we do medicine is evolving,” Petersen said.

MIT researchers at MIT have developed a microfluidic chip-based model of liver tissue that “allows researchers to understand the biological mechanisms underlying liver tissue regeneration and points to several molecules that may promote the process,” reports William A. Haseltine for Forbes. "These results mark significant progress in our understanding of the human body’s regenerative properties," writes Haseltine. 

Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with Nicole Estephan of WCVB-TV’s Chronicle about her work developing new AI systems that could be used to help diagnose breast and lung cancer before the cancers are detectable to the human eye.

Researchers from MIT and McMaster University have used artificial intelligence to identify a new antibiotic that can fight against a drug-resistant bacteria commonly found in hospitals and medical offices, reports Ken Alltucker for USA Today. The researchers believe the AI “process used to winnow thousands of potential drugs to identify one that may work is an approach that can work in drug discovery,” writes Alltucker.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have used artificial intelligence to develop a new antibiotic to address Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacteria known for infecting wounds, lungs and kidneys, reports Harland-Dunaway for The World.

Using a machine-learning algorithm, researchers from MIT and McMaster University have discovered a new type of antibiotic that works against a type of drug-resistant bacteria, reports Brenda Goodman for CNN. Goodman notes that the compound “worked in a way that stymied only the problem pathogen. It didn’t seem to kill the many other species of beneficial bacteria that live in the gut or on the skin, making it a rare narrowly targeted agent.”