4/3/09 Living cells are bombarded with messages from the outside world -- hormones and other chemicals tell them to grow, migrate, die or do nothing. Inside the cell, complex signaling networks interpret these cues and make life-and-death decisions. Unraveling these networks is critical to understanding human diseases, especially cancer, and to predicting how cells will react to potential treatments. Using a "fuzzy logic" approach, a team of MIT biological engineers has created a new model that reveals different and novel information about these inner cell workings than traditional computational models. The team, led by Doug Lauffenburger, head of MIT's Department of Biological Engineering, reports its findings in the April 3 issue of the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Computational Biology.   READ MORE >>

3/24/09 Researchers have developed a test that could help doctors precisely identify which breast cancer patients should receive aggressive therapy, thereby sparing many women at low risk for metastatic disease from undergoing unnecessary and potentially dangerous treatment. The researchers, including KI scientist Frank Gertler, developed the test based on an earlier finding that the co-mingling of three cell types can predict whether localized breast cancer will metastasize, or spread throughout the body. READ MORE >>

3/18/09 Maybe liver cells have the right to be such temperamental divas. They do a lot, such as building thousands of proteins, breaking down toxins, storing vitamins, metabolizing carbohydrates and helping digest fats. But take them out of the body, and they simply refuse to cooperate. At least so far. And so that's exactly what Sangeeta Bhatia, an MIT engineering professor who also has her M.D., wants them to do—function better outside of the body. If she can convince them to do that, a new vista of medical opportunities opens up, including better toxicity tests and even more replacement organs.  READ MORE >>

3/5/09 Researchers have developed a novel method of removing potential cancer-causing genes during the reprogramming of skin cells from Parkinson's disease patients into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. Scientists were then able to use the resulting induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to derive dopamine-producing neurons, the cell type that degenerates in Parkinson's disease patients. READ MORE >>

3/3/09 MIT graduate student and biomedical engineer Geoffrey von Maltzahn is this year's winner of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for his promising innovations in the area of cancer therapy. The 28-year-old PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) was selected specifically for two of his inventions in nanomedicine: a new class of cancer therapeutics and a new paradigm for enhancing drug delivery to tumors.  READ MORE >>