The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard today announced a new research alliance with Novo Nordisk aimed at addressing critical unmet clinical needs in diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases. The collaboration will focus on advancing three programs over the next three years. Two programs aim to identify drug targets for clinically important subtypes of type 2 diabetes, which affects more than…
Dr. Chun Lim discusses how BIDMC will be the first MA hospital to provide lecanemab to patients and the importance of the medical milestone An estimated 6.7 million adults in the U.S. are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory, cognitive skills, and eventually the ability to carry out simple tasks. Alzheimer’s disease, which…
Cell transplantation success for myocardial infarction (MI) treatment is often hindered by low engraftment due to washout effects during myocardial contraction. A clinically viable biomaterial that enhances cell retention can optimize intramyocardial cell delivery. In this study, a therapeutic cell delivery method is developed for MI treatment utilizing a photocrosslinkable gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogel. Human vascular progenitor cells, capable of…
Prime editing technologies allow scientists to precisely edit the genome in a variety of ways and could one day be used to treat genetic diseases. Now researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have used cutting-edge continuous laboratory evolution and engineering methods to develop improved versions of the gene-editing tool. Their new editors are more efficient and specialized…
To understand the full relationship between brain activity and behavior, scientists have needed a way to map this relationship for all of the neurons across a whole brain — a so far insurmountable challenge. But after inventing new technologies and methods for the purpose, a team of scientists in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT has produced…
A new agent that subverts myeloma cells from within while also subjecting them to an immune system attack produced impressive responses in combination with dexamethasone in patients with multiple myeloma that had relapsed and stopped responding to all currently available therapies, a clinical trial conducted by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and around the world has found. Results of the…
After a national search, the MIT Office of the Vice Chancellor has named Denzil A. Streete senior associate dean and director of the Office of Graduate Education (OGE). Streete succeeds Blanche Staton, who retired this summer after serving for more than 25 years at MIT. He will begin his role at MIT on Sept. 12. Streete brings significant experience as…
Nicholas Harper, a PhD candidate in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at UMass Chan Medical School, has received a prestigious Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Cancer Institute to study cell death as it relates to cancer therapies. “The goal is to find how to cause cancer cells to die without…
A genetically valid animal model could transform our understanding of schizophrenia (SCZ) disease mechanisms. Rare heterozygous loss-of-function (LoF) mutations in GRIN2A, encoding a subunit of the NMDA receptor, greatly increase the risk of SCZ. By transcriptomic, proteomic, and behavioral analyses, researchers report that heterozygous Grin2a mutant mice show (1) large-scale gene expression changes across multiple brain regions and in neuronal (excitatory and…
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN), a leading non-profit in the fight against pancreatic cancer, has awarded Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers William Freed-Pastor, MD, PhD, and Julien Dilly, MS, research grants of $250,000 and $150,000, respectively over a 2-year period, to support their crucial work in the field of pancreatic cancer research. As the third leading cause of cancer-related death…
