MIT

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A study emerging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the Harvard Data Science Review has detailed strategies for accelerating the regular pace of regulatory approvals in order to create a faster access route to essential treatments and prophylactics during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Randomised clinical trials are a cornerstone of research for new and effective therapies, but the issue of false positive and false negative results in study findings can skew our understanding of the safety and efficacy or a treatment, potenti

MIT researchers have identified a new antibiotic compound using a machine-learning algorithm.

In the laboratory tests, the drug killed many of the world’s most problematic disease-causing bacteria, including some strains that have been so far resistant to all known antibiotics. These included Acinetobacter baumannii and Enterobacteriaceae which are two of the three high-priority pathogens that the World Health Organization rank as critical for new antibiotics to target.

Image Credit: ZEISS Microscopy https://www.flickr.com/photos/zeissmicro/30614937102

A study conducted by MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has reinforced the notion that loss in the capacity for plasticity rather than loss of cells may be the root cause of cognitive decline throughout the normal aging process.

However scientists who published their results in the Journal of Neuroscience were able to restore the lost plasticity using the antidepressant medication fluoxetine commonly sold under the brand name Prozac, in mice.

Pictured, left to right, are: Manisha Bahl, Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Breast Imaging Fellowship Program; MIT Professor Regina Barzilay (center); and Constance Lehman, Professor at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Breast Imaging Division at MGH’s Department of Radiology. Image: Jason Dorfman/CSAIL

Scientists at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a machine learning AI system that is able diagnose patients with breast cancer 97% of the time.

At present, screening for breast cancer in the public involves a mammogram and, when abnormal cells are identified, a needle biopsy is the next stage. If the lesions are identified as “high-risk” then the usual routine option is to undergo surgery to remove the cells.

The ability to turn the device on and off provides a convenience factor

IT start-up company MicroCHIPS is developing a radical new contraceptive in the form of a microchip that is implanted under the skin – and can be operated wirelessly by remote control.

The US firm which has links to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and should it pass certain safety tests could be on the market as early as 2018.

AstraZeneca has signed a two-year collaboration with an academic institution - affiliated to the illustrious universities MIT and Harvard - in a bid to speed up discovery of antibacterial and antiviral drugs.

The Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will open up its chemical library of 100,000 customised molecules known as Diversity-Oriented Synthesis (DOS) compounds to the manufacturer.

Sanofi-Aventis has formed a strategic alliance with the Centre for Biodmedical Innovation  at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The alliance, to be known as the Sanofi-Aventis Biomedical Innovation Programme (SABIP), aims to promote scientific exchange between MIT and Sanofi.

It will also provide the French company with the opportunity to develop therapeutic, diagnostic and prognostic applications based any discoveries the alliance makes.