National Institutes of Health (NIH)

A study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has taken a deeper look at the “brief, frustrating moments after a bad night’s sleep when you simply can’t focus,” reports Bill Murphy for Inc. “The study suggested that the brain is juggling competing priorities,” explains Murphy. “During sleep, it performs what amounts to internal housekeeping, including fluid movement linked to clearing metabolic waste. During waking hours, it prioritizes attention and responsiveness. When sleep is cut short, those maintenance processes don’t disappear. Instead, they begin to intrude into waking life in short bursts, and attention drops at the same time.” 

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. 

MIT researchers have developed a deep-learning model “capable of predicting the precise movements, divisions, and restructuring of thousands of cells during the embryo’s transition from a simple cluster to a complex organism,” reports Mrigakshi Dixit for Interesting Engineering. “This model currently provides a sneak peek into the fruit fly’s earliest developmental stage,” explains Dixit. “In the future, it could be used to predict how more complex tissues, organs, and organisms develop.” 

Reporting for FOX News, Kurt Knuttson highlights how MIT researchers have developed a new light-based scanner that can read blood sugar without a single prick. “A handheld or watch-sized glucose scanner would mark a major shift in diabetes care,” writes Knuttson. “MIT's work brings that future closer with a design that reads your chemistry through light.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a device that can measure blood glucose levels through the skin. The team used “Raman spectroscopy to measure blood glucose because of the method’s ability to identify the chemical composition of samples noninvasively,” writes Sneha Khedkar for The Scientist. “The approach involves shining monochromatic light on samples and analyzing how the light scatters.” 

Researchers at MIT have developed a noninvasive, light-based blood-glucose monitoring system capable of replacing finger pricks and under-the-skin sensors used by patients with diabetes, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. The approach could “even fit on a device the size of a watch,” explains Paul. “Each measurement scan takes slightly more than 30 seconds to complete. The device also shows an accuracy comparable to two commercially available, wearable glucose monitors.” 

Researchers at MIT are using AI systems to design new molecules for potential antibiotics, research that is “aimed at the growing challenge of antibiotic-resistant infections,” reports Adele Peters for Fast Company. “The number of resistant bacterial pathogens has been growing, decade upon decade,” says Prof. James Collins. “And the number of new antibiotics being developed has been dropping, decade upon decade.” 

Prof. Bryan Bryson speaks with Chris Smith on The Naked Scientists podcast about his efforts to find targets for a new tuberculosis vaccine, as the current version, which is very effective in children, does not sufficiently protect adolescents and adults. “Right now, we only have one TB vaccine that's over 100 years old,” said Bryson.  “And for me as an engineer, if somebody tells you there's a 100 year old technology that doesn't work the way that you want it to, you want to say, let's build a better one.” 

Prof. Bryan Bryson and his colleagues have identified a series of targets for a new tuberculosis vaccine. The “researchers identified proteins expressed on the surface of cells infected with TB and used mRNA to coax uninfected human cells to produce the bacterial compounds, a key first step toward new vaccines,” writes Darren Incorvaia for Fierce Biotech. 

A new study from researchers at MIT shows that lack of focus after a poor night’s sleep often corresponds with a surge of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, which usually flows while we’re asleep. “We like to think we’re in control—that willpower, caffeine, and determination can overcome a missed night of sleep,” writes Bill Murphy Jr. for Inc. “However, this research suggests otherwise. When your brain needs to clean itself, it’s going to find a way to do it, whether you’re ready for it or not.”

Researchers at MIT examined how lack of sleep can impact a person’s attention, and “found that during these moments of brain fog, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is released out of the brain - a process which normally occurs whilst we are sound asleep, and helps to wash away waste products built up during the day,” reports Shaheena Uddin for The Independent. 

Prof. Laura Lewis and her colleagues have discovered that momentary lapses in attention that often follow a bad night’s sleep are caused by the brain attempting to flush fluid out of its system, a process that normally occurs during sleep, reports Carissa Wong for New Scientist. “If you don’t have these waves [of fluid flowing] at night because you’re kept awake all night, then your brain starts to kind of sneak them in during the daytime, but they come with this cost of attention,” says Lewis. 

Researchers at MIT have found that momentary lapses in attention, often described as zoning out, coincide with waves of fluid flowing out of the brain, reports Ian Sample for The Guardian. “The moment somebody’s attention fails is the moment this wave of fluid starts to pulse,” says Prof. Laura Lewis. “It’s not just that your neurons aren’t paying attention to the world, there’s this big change in fluid in the brain at the same time.”