#Getting more electricity out of solar cells When sunlight shines on today solar cells, much of the incoming energy is given off as waste heat rather than electrical current.
including the areas most affected by Parkinson disease, which is caused by the death of dopamine-generating cells.
which may lead to cancer and other diseases if not mended. The effectiveness of these repair systems varies greatly from person to person;
scientists believe that this variability may explain why some people get cancer while others exposed to similar DNA-damaging agents do not.
A team of MIT researchers has developed now a test that can rapidly assess several of these repair systems,
which could help determine individualsrisk of developing cancer and help doctors predict how a given patient will respond to chemotherapy drugs.
who is the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor, an American Cancer Society Professor, and a member of MIT departments of biological engineering and of biology, Center for Environmental Health Sciences,
and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Measuring repair With the new test, the MIT team can measure how well cells repair the most common DNA lesions,
including single-strand breaks, double-strand breaks, mismatches, and the introduction of alkyl groups caused by pollutants such as fuel exhaust and tobacco smoke.
of which carry a specific type of DNA damage, also called DNA lesions. Each of these CIRCULAR DNA strands,
the DNA lesions prevent those genes from being expressed, so when the DNA is repaired successfully, the cell begins to produce the fluorescent protein.
In others, repairing the DNA lesion turns the fluorescent gene off. By introducing these plasmids into cells and reading the fluorescent output,
scientists can determine how efficiently each kind of lesion has been repaired. In theory, more than five plasmids could go into each cell,
which type of lesion the plasmid carries, as well as information about which patient cells are being tested.
Some of these differences have been linked with cancer vulnerability; for example, a genetic defect in a type of DNA repair called nucleotide excision repair often leads to a condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, in
which DNA damage caused by ultraviolet light goes unrepaired and leads to skin cancer. Scientists have identified also links between DNA repair and neurological, developmental,
and immunological disorders, but useful predictive DNA-repair-based tests have not been developed, largely because it has been impossible to rapidly analyze several different types of DNA repair capacity at once.
and potentially enabling prevention or earlier diagnosis of diseases linked to DNA repair. Such a test could also be used to predict patientsresponse to chemotherapy drugs, which often work by damaging cancer cellsdna,
or to determine how much radiation treatment a patient can tolerate. The researchers also believe this test could be exploited to screen for new drugs that inhibit
Inhibitors could be targeted to tumors to make them more susceptible to chemotherapy, while enhancers could help protect people who have been exposed accidentally to DNA-damaging agents,
Tumors in low-oxygen environments tend to be more resistant to therapy and spread more aggressively to other parts of the body.
Measuring tumors oxygen levels could help doctors make decisions about treatments but there s currently no reliable noninvasive way to make such measurements.
In cases where you are trying to make therapeutic decisions you want to have some numbers that you can fall back on says Vincent Liu a graduate student in Cima s lab at MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Doctors often use MRI to diagnose tumors but currently MRI can only reveal the size and location of a tumor.
With the new MIT sensor doctors could track the state of the tumor and predict how it might respond to radiation treatment according to the researchers.
Radiation kills tumors by initiating DNA damage but oxygen is required to help finish the job.
An accurate reading of how much oxygen is present would help doctors calculate how much radiation might be necessary.
Measuring oxygen levels could also reveal the metastatic potential of a tumor: Those with lower oxygen levels tend to spread more aggressively.
Ralph Weissleder a professor at Harvard Medical school and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Molecular Imaging Research says this type of sensor is a novel way to potentially track how cancer patients
The cancer field certainly needs something like this says Weissleder who was not part of the research team.
What s happening in a tumor This type of sensor could also be useful for monitoring blood flow in diabetic patients who often experience restricted circulation in their extremities
or people who have suffered traumatic injuries. The researchers also anticipate that it could help scientists learn more about tumor biology.
As opposed to just studying the genetic profile of tumor cells this could also reveal how they re interacting with the stroma that surrounds the tumor.
Oxygen tension as simple as it sounds is a good measure of what s happening in a tumor Cima says.
The researchers are now working on sensors that could be used to monitor other biological properties such as ph. We hope this is the first of many types of solid-state contrast agents where the material responds to its chemical environment in such a way that we can detect it by MRI Cima says.
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence and the U s army Research Office e
lowers joint stress; and drastically lowers the time required to acclimate to the prosthesis (which can take weeks or months with conventional models).
The system Herr says could also help prevent osteoarthritis a joint condition caused by age
and experience greater musculoskeletal stress which causes joint osteoarthritis. The scientific and engineering research that ultimately led to today s Biom prosthesis was conducted by Herr s research group within the MIT Media Lab
Osteoarthritis humanoid design and personal bionics Biom s broader goal is to prevent costly conditions such as osteoarthritis. As we age the loss of fast muscle fibers
and calf muscles to lose power driving painful joint disorders such as knee osteoarthritis and low back pain caused in part by awkward limping gaits.
Across the elderly population joint osteoarthritis is a leading cause of mobility impairment. At least among amputees Herr says Biom could help by fitting elderly populations with leg prostheses equal in biomechanical agility and control to a young adult s legs:
We find ourselves in a position where we can put 18-year-old calf muscles on patients independent of their age mitigating the problem of joint osteoarthritis across all populations Herr says.
The findings described in the March 30 issue of Nature Biotechnology offer the first evidence that this gene-editing technique known as CRISPR can reverse disease symptoms in living animals.
and replace it with the correct sequence holds potential for treating many genetic disorders according to the research team.
What s exciting about this approach is that we can actually correct a defective gene in a living adult animal says Daniel Anderson the Samuel A. Goldblith Associate professor of Chemical engineering at MIT a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
The recently developed CRISPR system relies on cellular machinery that bacteria use to defend themselves from viral infection.
Scientists envision that this kind of genome editing could one day help treat diseases such as hemophilia Huntington s disease
Disease correctionfor this study the researchers designed three GUIDE RNA strands that target different DNA sequences near the mutation that causes type I tyrosinemia in a gene that codes for an enzyme called FAH.
Patients with this disease which affects about 1 in 100000 people cannot break down the amino acid tyrosine
This was enough to cure the disease allowing the mice to survive after being taken off the NCTB drug.
In particular the authors note that the efficiency of gene editing will need to improve significantly to be relevant for most diseases
Nevertheless this work is an exciting first step to using modern gene-editing tools to correct the devastating genetic diseases for
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute the National institutes of health and the Marie D. and Pierre Casimir-Lambert Fund u
injected by the phage into the pathogen, to cause the bacteria to shine very brightly,
making it, according to Sample6, the world first nrichment-free pathogen diagnostic system. For instance if one strain of a pathogen needs identification, roducers usually grow the bacteria out to large numbers before they can detect it,
Lu says. his is slow, and obviously not ideal for the food industry. All these improvements contribute to the assay speed,
Thus, by sourcing from nature, we can adapt the platform to other pathogens and applications,
with the potential for clinical diagnostics or rapid detection of contamination in hospital rooms with the aim of decreasing the 1. 7 million cases of hospital-associated infections recorded in the United states each year.
Theye also used as biological probes to image cancer and to study processes inside cells,
and rapidly test new peptides to treat cancer and other diseases, as well as more effective variants of existing peptides, such as insulin, Pentelute says.
as well as serve as plant-based biosensors and stress reducers. By adapting the sensors to different targets,
pesticides, fungal infections, or exposure to bacterial toxins. They are also working on incorporating electronic nanomaterials, such as graphene, into plants. ight now,
#How tumors escape About 90 percent of cancer deaths are caused by tumors that have spread from their original locations.
MIT cancer biologists have discovered now that certain proteins in this structure, known as the extracellular matrix, help cancer cells make their escape.
but not less aggressive tumors, and found that four of those proteins are critical to metastasis. The findings could lead to new tests that predict which tumors are most likely to metastasize,
and may also help to identify new therapeutic targets for metastatic tumors, which are extremely difficult to treat. he problem is,
all the current drugs are targeted to primary tumors. Once a metastasis appears, in many cases, there nothing you can do about it,
says Richard Hynes, leader of the research team and a member of MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. n principle,
Patients whose tumors have a greater abundance of extracellular matrix proteins have a poorer prognosis, but until now, scientists did not know why. he matrix has really been understudied,
the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research in MIT Department of biology. his study couldn have been done five to 10 years ago.
Researchers in Hyneslab previously developed a method for identifying extracellular matrix proteins by enriching them from tumors
To compare the extracellular matrix proteins found in different tumor types, the researchers implanted metastatic and nonmetastatic human breast cancer cells into mice.
They identified 118 extracellular matrix proteins that were found in both types of tumors. However, there were also several dozen proteins that were abundant in either metastatic or nonmetastatic tumors,
but not both. Manipulating the environment It appears that metastatic tumors as well as the supportive cells that surround them, secrete certain proteins into the extracellular matrix to make it easier for them to escape
Many of the proteins overexpressed in the more aggressive tumors are activated by the same cellular signaling pathways,
the researchers analyzed five of the proteins that are elevated in highly aggressive tumors and found that four of them are necessary for metastasis to occur.
tumors failed to spread. his elegant study sheds new light into the extracellular matrix proteins involved in various steps of the metastatic cascade,
a professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical school and Massachusetts General Hospital. ur knowledge about the abundance of extracellular matrix proteins in tumors has been limited.
The researchers also compared their results with human tumor samples and found that when the proteins they had identified in mice were overexpressed in human tumors,
the patients had lower survival rates. It would be impractical to do this kind of large-scale protein screen in patients,
who are now developing such antibodies. hat could become part of a kit that doctors would use to distinguish a patient who has a tumor that going to metastasize,
so they would follow the patient differently from a patient with a tumor they know won metastasize,
The researchers are now seeking extracellular matrix proteins that are overexpressed in other metastatic cancers, including colon and pancreatic cancers.
which escaped tumor cells often metastasize such as the bone, liver, and lungs make them more receptive to invading cancer cells.
#A paper diagnostic for cancer Cancer rates in developing nations have climbed sharply in recent years
and now account for 70 percent of cancer mortality worldwide. Early detection has been proven to improve outcomes
whether a person has cancer. This approach has helped detect infectious diseases and the new technology allows noncommunicable diseases to be detected using the same strategy.
The technology developed by MIT professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Sangeeta Bhatia relies on nanoparticles that interact with tumor proteins called proteases each
of which can trigger release of hundreds of biomarkers that are then easily detectable in a patient s urine.
When we invented this new class of synthetic biomarker we used a highly specialized instrument to do the analysis says Bhatia the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical engineering and Computer science.
Bhatia who is also a member of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Amplifying cancer signalsin 2012 Bhatia and colleagues introduced the concept of a synthetic biomarker technology to amplify signals from tumor proteins that would be hard to detect on their own.
These proteins known as matrix metalloproteinases (MMPS) help cancer cells escape their original locations by cutting through proteins of the extracellular matrix which normally holds cells in place.
These particles congregate at tumor sites where MMPS cleave hundreds of peptides which accumulate in the kidneys
The technology can also easily be modified to detect multiple types of peptides released by different types or stages of disease.
In tests in mice the researchers were able to accurately identify colon tumors as well as blood clots.
Bhatia says the technology would likely first be applied to high-risk populations such as people who have had cancer previously
or had a family member with the disease. Eventually she would like to see it used for early detection throughout developing nations.
I think it would be great to bring it back to this setting where point-of-care image-free cancer detection
The team is also working to identify signatures of MMPS that could be exploited as biomarkers for other types of cancer as well as for tumors that have metastasized.
the Burroughs Wellcome Fund the National Cancer Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute u
and for our understanding of how infections take hold in medical devices. The findings the result of microscopic analysis of bacteria inside microfluidic devices were made by MIT postdoc Roberto Rusconi former MIT postdoc Jeffrey Guasto (now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Tufts
Guasto says the new understanding could help in the design of medical equipment to reduce such infections:
including those for influenza, polio, and measles, consist of a killed or disabled version of a virus. However, for certain diseases,
this type of vaccine is ineffective, or just too risky. An alternative, safer approach is made a vaccine of small fragments of proteins produced by a disease-causing virus or bacterium.
This has worked for some diseases, but in many cases these vaccines don provoke a strong enough response.
Now a team of engineers at MIT has developed a new way to deliver such vaccines directly to the lymph nodes
and for stimulating the body immune system to attack tumors, says Irvine, who is also a member of MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
Free ride Vaccines made of protein or sugar fragments, also known as subunit vaccines, have been successful against a few diseases, such as hepatitis and diphtheria.
To develop subunit vaccines for other diseases, scientists have tried targeting them to lymph nodes using nanoparticles to deliver them,
or tagging them with antibodies specific to immune cells in the lymph nodes. However these strategies have had limited only success,
to determine the extent of cancer metastasis after removing a tumor. The dye used for this imaging binds tightly to albumin,
targeting HIV, melanoma, and cervical cancer, and tested them in mice. Each one generated a large population of memory T cells specific to the viral
or tumor peptide. e knew we were on the right track because we saw you could get immune responses that were just tremendous,
Irvine says. hen you look in the blood, one in three T cells in the blood was a vaccine-specific T cell,
The melanoma vaccine slowed cancer growth and the cervical cancer vaccine shrank tumors. t certainly is an interesting approach,
and the results are very convincing, says Pal Johansen, a professor of dermatology at University Hospital Zurich who was not part of the research team. oth the effect on the stimulated immune responses
and the consequential suppression of tumor growth are results that would suggest further development and clinical testing.
and they are also working on further developing cancer vaccines, including one for lung cancer. The research was funded by the Koch Institute Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute, the National institutes of health, the U s. Department of defense,
and the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard university l
#Boosting science math technology and ethics in Tibetan communities To many Westerners science monks and technology may not be an obvious trio.
#Cochlear implants with no exterior hardware Cochlear implants medical devices that electrically stimulate the auditory nerve have granted at least limited hearing to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who otherwise would be totally deaf.
director of the Cochlear Implant Center at the University of California at San francisco. here a much greater stigma of having a hearing loss than there is of having a visual loss.
It could also shed light on processes that underlie conditions such as memory disorders or dyslexia, and could benefit patients suffering from paralysis
or neurodegenerative diseases. his is the first time that MEG and fmri have been connected in this way, giving us a unique perspective,
Pantazis says. e now have the tools to precisely map brain function both in space and time,
Many Kenyans also face financial crises due to health problems. In all, about 50 percent of households in the study reported serious negative income shocks in the six months preceding the survey. hey face very high-risk environments
or over edge of a wall, going that fast could mean crashes and injuries. So for some customers that operate in dangerous terrain,
and could be used to create sensors to monitor diseases such as cancer, inflammation, or diabetes in living systems. his new technique gives us an unprecedented ability to recognize any target molecule by screening nanotube-polymer complexes to create synthetic analogs to antibody function,
says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical engineering at MIT and senior author of the study,
#Biologists ID new cancer weakness About half of all cancer patients have a mutation in a gene called p53
which allows tumors to survive and continue growing even after chemotherapy severely damages their DNA.
A new study from MIT biologists has found that tumor cells with mutated p53 can be made much more vulnerable to chemotherapy by blocking another gene called MK2.
In a study of mice tumors lacking both p53 and MK2 shrank dramatically when treated with the drug cisplatin while tumors with functional MK2 kept growing after treatment.
The findings suggest that giving cancer patients a combination of a DNA-damaging drug and an MK2 inhibitor could be very effective says Michael Yaffe the David H. Koch Professor in Science
and senior author of a paper describing the research in the Nov 14 issue of the journal Cell Reports.
Several drugs that inhibit MK2 are now in clinical trials to treat inflammatory diseases such as arthritis
and colitis but the drugs have never been tested as possible cancer treatments. What our study really says is that these drugs could have an entirely new second life in combination with chemotherapy says Yaffe who is a member of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
We re very much hoping it will go into clinical trials for cancer. Sandra Morandell a postdoc at the Koch Institute is the paper s lead author.
To kill a tumorp53 is a tumor suppressor-protein protein that controls cell division. Before cell division begins p53 checks the cell s DNA
or apoptosis. Tumors that lack p53 can avoid this fate. Usually p53 is the main driver of cell death
if you block the MK2 pathway tumor cells wouldn t recognize that they had DNA damage
if this would hold true in tumors in living animals as well as cells grown in a lab dish.
To do that they used a strain of mice that are programmed genetically to develop non-small-cell lung tumors.
or off allowing them to study tumors with and without MK2 in the same animal.
This new approach allows them for the first time to compare different types of tumors in the same mice where all genetic factors are identical except for MK2 expression.
Using these mice the researchers found that before treatment tumors lacking both MK2 and p53 grow faster than tumors that have MK2.
This suggests that treating tumors with an MK2 inhibitor alone would actually do more harm than good possibly increasing the tumor s growth rate by taking the brake off the cell cycle.
However when these tumors are treated with cisplatin the tumors lacking MK2 shrink dramatically while those with MK2 continue growing.
A nonobvious combination The potential combination of cisplatin and MK2 inhibitors is unlike other chemotherapy combinations that have been approved by the Food
While this study focused on non-small-cell lung tumors the researchers have gotten similar results in cancer cells grown in the lab from bone cervical and ovarian tumors.
They are now studying mouse models of colon and ovarian cancer. The research was funded by the Austrian Science Fund the National institutes of health Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. the Koch Institute MIT s Center for Environmental Health Sciences the Volkswagenstiftung the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft the German
which hold potential as portable diagnostic devices for cancer and other diseases. These devices consist of microfluidic channels engraved on tiny chips,
This type of particle can be useful for diagnosing cancer and other diseases, following customization to detect proteins
or DNA sequences in blood samples that can be signs of disease. Using a cytometer,
#Resistance is futile Cisplatin is given a chemotherapy drug to more than half of all cancer patients. The drug kills cells very effectively by damaging nuclear DNA but if tumors become resistant to cisplatin they often grow back.
A new study from MIT and the University of Toronto offers a possible way to overcome that resistance.
Senior authors of the new paper are Stephen Lippard the Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Shana
which contains the metal platinum was approved to treat ovarian and testicular tumors in 1978 and is used now for many other cancers including lung and bladder.
The drug forms crosslinks in DNA creating blockages that interfere with a cell s ability to read
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute the Canadian Institute of Health and a David H. Koch Graduate Fellowship s
the ankle was least stiff a finding that suggests this direction of movement is most vulnerable to injury.
hich are highly relevant to many ankle injuries including the common ankle sprain. n intriguing extension of this work is that it may be possible to train individuals to activate their ankle musculature in a way that helps reduce the chance of injury,
Understanding the mechanics of the ankle in healthy subjects may help therapists identify abnormalities in patients with motor disorders.
#Schizophrenia linked to abnormal brain waves Schizophrenia patients usually suffer from a breakdown of organized thought often accompanied by delusions or hallucinations.
Mutations in the gene for calcineurin have previously been found in some schizophrenia patients. Ten years ago MIT researchers led by Susumu Tonegawa the Picower Professor of Biology
these mice displayed several behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia including impaired short-term memory attention deficits and abnormal social behavior.
This pattern helps to explain some of the symptoms seen in schizophrenia the researchers say.
However this network is hyperactive in schizophrenic patients before and during tasks that require the brain to focus
Further studies of these mice could help reveal more about the role of the default mode network in schizophrenia Tonegawa says.
and cause a stroke or heart attack. However new technology from MIT may soon change that:
but existing blood tests are not consistently able to detect the formation of new clots says Bhatia who is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute and a member of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Sensing thrombinblood clotting is produced by a complex cascade of protein interactions culminating in the formation of fibrin a fibrous protein that seals wounds.
Bhatia and her colleagues developed their new test based on a technology they first reported last year for early detection of colorectal cancer.
If a patient is at risk for thrombosis you could send them home with a 10-pack of these sticks
High levels of activation markers have been related to recurrent thrombosis but they don t have good sensitivity or specificity.
and diagnosing cancer. It could also be adapted to track liver pulmonary and kidney fibrosis Bhatia says.
The research was funded by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Fund the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund the Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellows Program the Burroughs Wellcome
Fund and the Deshpande Center r
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