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Luc7, the blue group of proteins, against a background of human cells.

Splice of life

MIT News

February 20, 2025

The Burge lab has discovered a new type of control over RNA splicing, a process critical for gene expression. Appearing in a new Nature Communications paper, their study sheds light on how this control mechanism can go wrong—and serve as a potential therapeutic target—in acute myelogenous leukemias and other diseases.

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Crystal Clear Drug Delivery Solutions

MIT News

March 24, 2025

Giovanni Traverso and his team have developed injectable drug crystals for long-lasting, less painful delivery of contraceptives and disease treatments. A study published in Nature Chemical Engineering showed that the crystals released contraceptives at least twice as long as currently available injectable suspensions. Unlike other vehicles for longer-lasting release, the crystals do not require a difficult and painful large-gauge needle for injection.

Dual duty microneedles

Nature Materials

March 6, 2025

A new Jaklenec lab study published in Nature Materials demonstrates novel microneedle patches that can be applied to the skin to deliver mRNA drugs and store billions of bits of anonymous and reliable information. This technology could be used to enhance healthcare in low resource settings, while addressing critical challenges related to  reliability and privacy of traditional paper and digital database systems for patient information.

Science on the menu

MIT News

March 3, 2025

MIT hosted its annual “Breakfast with Scientists,” where some of the nation’s most talented high school researchers met with with leading scientific minds, including KI faculty members Amy Keating, Kristen Knouse, and Phillip Sharp. Student delegates were convened in Boston for the American Junior Academy of Science conference, held alongside the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

Tardi-grade A science

MIT News

February 26, 2025

About 60 percent of cancer patients in the U.S. receive radiation therapy, which can have severe side effects. In a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team led by Giovanni Traverso discovered that a protein from tardigrades (microscopic "water bears") can protect human cells from radiation damage, minimizing treatment side effects.

Solving the puzzle of immune evasion

MIT News

February 26, 2025

Stefani Spranger’s work is focused on uncovering why some tumors evade the immune system’s attack. For example, her latest research, published in Cancer Immunology Research, reveals that lung cancer cells expressing SOX2 can block CD8+ T cells, undermining checkpoint blockade therapy. “By understanding these resistance mechanisms, we can develop smarter immunotherapies to outmaneuver cancer,” says Spranger.

AI in Action 

Forbes

February 26, 2025

Assessing promise versus prudence for AI in healthcare, Forbes highlighted Regina Barzilay's research showing AI can reliably improve breast cancer detection rates by 20% without increasing false positives. In a recent interview with Cancer Network, Barzilay discussed how AI’s proven ability to improve cancer detection rates in both breast and lung cancer screening may eventually push for updates to outdated protocols.

Koehler to lead MIT HEALS

MIT Office of the President

February 21, 2025

Congratulations to Angela Koehler on being named director of the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS). MIT HEALS was established last year to bring together researchers from across the Institute to innovate new solutions to urgent challenges in health care. Koehler will be joined by two associate directors: Department of Biology professor Iain Cheeseman and Department of Biological Engineering professor Katharina Ribbeck.

Splice of life

MIT News

February 20, 2025

The Burge lab has discovered a new type of control over RNA splicing, a process critical for gene expression. Appearing in a new Nature Communications paper, their study sheds light on how this control mechanism can go wrong—and serve as a potential therapeutic target—in acute myelogenous leukemias and other diseases.

Protein location prediction

MIT News

February 13, 2025

Inspired by AlphaFold, a groundbreaking tool for predicting protein structure, researchers led by Regina Barzilay and Richard Young developed ProtGPS, a machine learning model that predicts protein location based on the sequence of its amino acid components. In a Science study, the team demonstrated that ProtGPS can also predict how disease-related mutations change protein location as well as generate new protein designs targeted to a desired location.  

Seeing breast cancer in a new light

Microsoft News Network

February 4, 2025

Following FDA approval in 2024, Lumicell’s LumiSystem for real-time cancer detection is now commercially available in the U.S. Developed with early support from the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, it reveals residual cancer cells during surgery to enable precise and efficient correction, improve patient outcomes and reduce the need for additional treatments.