Prof. Tyler Jacks, president of the nonprofit Break Through Cancer, speaks to The New York Times’ Gina Kolata about his research on resistance to the drug daraxonrasib in pancreatic cancer patients. “We all believe that daraxonrasib and other KRAS inhibitors are important initial steps [for treating pancreatic cancer],” says Jacks. In the future, the research will lead to, “one day, cures.”
The Financial Times’ Anjana Ahuja highlights Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia and Senior Postdoctoral Associate Vardhman Kumar’s work developing injectable “mini livers,” tissue grafts that could “take on some of the life-saving functions of liver cells: helping with blood clotting, detoxifying the bloodstream and breaking down medicines. The injectable grafts, they suggest, could also be used as a bridging treatment while patients wait for a transplant, with booster injections able to dial up the dose,” writes Ahuja.
MIT researchers have created a microscope that can image electrical activity in neurons across the brain, writes Earth.com’s Eric Ralls. “We can now ask: Which neurons respond first?” says Zeguan Wang, first author on the study. “Where does a sequence begin, and how does activity spread to recruit the rest of the network?”
The life and work of the late Nobel laureate Prof. Susumu Tonegawa, founding director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, is spotlighted by The New York Times’ Dylan Loeb McClain. “Few scientists have reshaped our understanding of biology as profoundly,” says Prof. Myriam Heiman, director of the Picower Institute. “His intellectual fearlessness, extraordinary creativity and relentless pursuit of fundamental questions opened entirely new frontiers in both immunology and neuroscience.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets may increase the risk of certain intestinal cancers, writes Newsweek’s Daniella Gray. “The researchers say future studies will be needed to better understand how specific dietary fats influence cancer risk and whether modifying the composition of ketogenic diets could reduce potential harms while preserving any health benefits,” writes Gray.
MIT researchers found that the keto diet, which emphasizes low carbs and sugar, could increase the risk of tumors in the small intestine, explains New York Post reporter Allie Yang. The researchers found that “cells burning fat (from ketosis) start a chain reaction which leads to stem cells multiplying rapidly, increasing the chance they go out of control and become cancer,” Yang explains.
MIT researchers have found that colon cancer cells can “change their identity, allowing them to travel through the body and form new tumors,” reports Daniella Gray for Newsweek. The findings could point to future treatments that can prevent metastasis—the leading cause of death for colorectal cancer patients, Gray explains.
Visiting Scientist Alice Stanton speaks with Scientific American reporter Tanya Lewis about her work developing miBrain, a 3D model of the human aimed at helping scientists “better understand neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s so researchers can develop personalized treatments for them.” Says Stanton of the need for stable support for scientific research: “When we have a loved one who gets sick, we want a treatment—we want something to cure them. It doesn’t come out of thin air.”
Sybil, a new AI tool developed by researchers from MIT and Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, “analyzes a single CT scan and generates a risk score predicting the likelihood of developing lung cancer over a period of up to six years,” reports Ivan Rodriguez for WCVB-TV. “In 2023, researchers reported that Sybil achieved an accuracy rate of 86% to 94% in distinguishing high-risk patients from low-risk patients within a year.”
Reporting for CNN, Caleb Hellerman spotlights how MIT computer scientists developed an AI program called Sybil that can “‘look’ at a single CT scan and generate a ‘risk score’ corresponding to the likelihood of the person developing cancer over any period up to six years.”
Researchers at MIT have developed “mini livers” that “can be injected into the body to help take over the functions of a failing liver,” reports Ian Randall for Newsweek. “If realized clinically, the development could provide a lifeline for many of the more than 10,000 Americans with chronic liver disease currently waiting for a transplant,” writes Randall.
Prof. Robert Langer, Prof. Giovanni Traverso and former postdoctoral fellow Thomas von Erlach founded Vivtex, a biotechnology startup that has “created a high-tech system called a ‘GI tract on a chip’ that uses robotics and AI to test how drugs move through the human digestive system,” reports Beth Treffeisen for Boston.com. “The technology allows Vivtex to quickly test thousands of drug formulations and predict how they will be absorbed in people, much more accurately than traditional lab methods.”
Profs. Robert Langer, Giovanni Traverso and former postdoctoral fellow Thomas von Erlach have founded Vivtex, a biotechnology startup specializing in “oral alternatives to drugs administered by injections,” reports Jonathan Satlzman for The Boston Globe. Vivtex, now working in collaboration with Novo Nordisk, is looking to develop a new class of “pills to treat obesity and diabetes,” explains Saltzman.
Prof. Angela Belcher and Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia chat with Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s The Curiosity Desk about their efforts aimed at improving diagnostics for ovarian cancer. “We now know that ovarian cancer doesn’t originate in the ovaries. About 80% of the time, ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, but it can sit there as this precancerous lesion,” explains Belcher. “There’s new technologies that can be invented and developed to detect it much earlier, because if it’s detected earlier…there’s such an opportunity to make an impact.”
MIT researchers have developed a new method to fortify foods and beverages as part of an effort to combat global malnutrition, reports Insha Naureen for Food Ingredients First. “The innovation offers a potential solution to the global malnutrition crisis due to iron deficiency, which can lead to anemia, impaired brain development in children, and increased infant mortality,” Naureen explains. “Beyond iron and iodine, this platform can also deliver multiple micronutrients or bioactive compounds in a single formulation, enabling targeted nutritional strategies,” explains Ana Jaklenec, a principal investigator at the Koch Institute.