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A natural protein may protect the GI tract from infection

“What’s remarkable is that intelectin-2 operates in two complementary ways. It helps stabilize the mucus layer, and if that barrier is compromised, it can directly neutralize or restrain bacteria that begin to... Read more »

The new word in home construction could be “plastics”

The design they came up with is similar in shape to the traditional wooden trusses that support flooring, with beams that connect in a pattern resembling a ladder with diagonal rungs. To... Read more »

AI benchmarks are broken. Here’s what we need instead.

Across the organizations where this approach has emerged and started to be applied, the first step is shifting the unit of analysis.  For example, in one UK hospital system in the period... Read more »

Innovation on the move

Choe in particular has been at the center of this push as the agency’s chief of staff since 2023, a position in which she took the lead in revamping organizational culture. She... Read more »

A boost for manufacturing

John Hart, a co-director of MIT’s Initiative for New ManufacturingM SCOTT BRAUER After all, Love and his colleagues created a new method for making batches of certain types of drugs. That’s manufacturing;... Read more »

Vine-inspired robot fingers can reach out and grab someone

The new bot consists of a pressurized box from which long, vine-like tubes inflate and grow. As they extend, the vines twist and coil around the object before continuing back toward the... Read more »

Reformulated antibodies could be injected for easier treatment

In 2023, Doyle’s lab developed a way to generated highly concentrated antibody formulations by encapsulating them into hydrogel particles. However, that requires centrifugation, a step that would be difficult to scale up... Read more »

A I-designed proteins may help spot cancer

Sangeeta Bhatia, SM ’93, PhD ’97, a senior author of a paper on the work with her former student Ava Amini ’16, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, led the MIT team... Read more »

A new way to rejuvenate the immune system

As people age, their immune function weakens. Owing to shrinkage of the thymus, where T cells normally mature and diversify, populations of these immune cells become smaller and can’t react to pathogens... Read more »

A retinal reboot for amblyopia

Bear’s team, which has been studying amblyopia for decades, had previously shown that this effect could be achieved by anesthetizing both eyes or the non-­amblyopic eye, analogous to having a child wear... Read more »