Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Press Releases - EIN Presswire

Published on January 22, 2024 - 15:00 GMT

Q&A: New approaches are needed to find better cancer drug targets

Tumors depend heavily on certain genetic changes to thrive, and researchers have discovered many such “genetic dependencies” as targets for potential new cancer drugs. At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and elsewhere, researchers are also learning …

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Published on January 19, 2024 - 10:00 GMT

Study reveals how some bacterial infections become chronic

In the early 1900s, a cook named Mary Mallon, better known as “Typhoid Mary”, spread Salmonella Typhi, the causative agent of typhoid fever, to dozens of her patrons even though she showed no symptoms. Many people today harbor pathogenic Salmonella …

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Published on January 18, 2024 - 19:00 GMT

Injectable agents could improve liquid biopsy for cancer detection and monitoring

Scientists have developed two agents, made of therapeutic nanoparticles and antibodies, that could be given to patients shortly before a blood draw to allow physicians to better detect tumor DNA in blood using a technology called liquid biopsy. Liquid …

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Published on January 8, 2024 - 11:29 GMT

Researchers engineer in vivo delivery system for prime editing, partially restoring vision in mice

Prime editing, a versatile form of gene editing that can correct most known disease-causing genetic mutations, now has a new vehicle to deliver its machinery into cells in living animals. A team of researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has …

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Published on December 18, 2023 - 15:02 GMT

Q&A: How to jump-start new psychiatric and neurological drug development

Psychiatric and neurological disorders are widespread, yet the pace of drug development for these conditions lags far behind that of heart disease, cancer, and other conditions. Brain disorders are difficult to study and many drug candidates have failed in …

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Published on October 11, 2023 - 15:00 GMT

A research team searches for every gene that helps tumors evade immunotherapy

As Manguso was wrapping up his PhD work in 2017, he, Haining (now at Arsenal Biosciences), and Kathleen Yates, an immunologist in Haining’s lab with a track record of executing large, complex projects, began to think big about the approach they were taking …

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Published on October 4, 2023 - 15:00 GMT

Cancer immunotherapy candidate provokes powerful dual response in cancer and immune cells

Manguso and Kathleen Yates at the Broad co-direct TIDE, which uses CRISPR screens and other tools in animals to systematically uncover genes such as PTPN2 that cancers use to evade immunotherapy. Hakimeh Ebrahimi-Nik, a senior research scientist in TIDE, …

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Published on August 31, 2023 - 15:00 GMT

Evolved prime editors are smaller and more efficient for therapeutic applications

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 …

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Published on August 31, 2023 - 15:00 GMT

Schizophrenia gene mutation causes many changes in the mouse brain

Researchers have identified common and rare gene mutations that increase risk for schizophrenia. Yet it’s unclear what biological mechanisms go awry in the brain to cause psychosis and other disabling symptoms, due in part to a lack of valid animal models …

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Published on August 14, 2023 - 15:00 GMT

Three studies highlight how proteins are altered in multiple cancer types

Over the past two decades, scientists have shed light on the genetic mutations that drive cancer. More recently, they are focusing on proteins to understand the biological events in cancer cells that lead to disease. In three new studies, researchers …

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Published on July 19, 2023 - 18:00 GMT

Researchers reprogram gene therapy viral vectors to bind specific protein targets

In 2019, Deverman’s group identified the protein that serves as a receptor for AAV-PHP.B, a capsid that is efficiently transported across the blood-brain barrier. That made them wonder whether they could develop a screening approach that would find more …

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Published on June 28, 2023 - 14:42 GMT

How chromosome imbalances can drive cancer

The vast majority of cancer cells have too few or too many copies of some chromosomes, a state known as aneuploidy. But for decades, researchers have debated whether aneuploidy promotes the growth of cancers, or is simply a side effect of cancer cells’ …

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Published on May 11, 2023 - 19:47 GMT

Survey of brain cell junctions shows striking similarities between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Although bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are diagnosed as distinct psychiatric conditions, both are considerably heritable with molecular roots that are poorly understood. Some people diagnosed with one disorder have symptoms and clinical features in …

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Published on April 20, 2023 - 15:05 GMT

Scientists use genetics to dig into a tumor’s past

For patients with some types of cancer, diagnosis can happen at an advanced stage. While a tumor grows unnoticed, it accumulates hundreds to thousands of mutations, making it difficult for scientists studying late-stage cancers to figure out which ones …

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Published on April 18, 2023 - 14:51 GMT

Lung cancer’s molecular features shed light on immunotherapy response

One of the newest types of cancer drugs, immunotherapies called immune checkpoint inhibitors, has transformed the treatment of lung cancer over the last decade — dramatically improving the survival of some patients with the most common form of this disease …

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Published on March 30, 2023 - 18:00 GMT

Base editing treats spinal muscular atrophy in mice

Researchers have used a gene-editing technique called base editing to restore motor function to near-normal levels in a mouse model of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) — a disease that leads to paralysis and, in its most severe form, death before the age of …

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Published on March 29, 2023 - 15:00 GMT

Bacterial injection system delivers proteins in mice and human cells

Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT have harnessed a natural bacterial system to develop a new protein delivery approach that works in human cells and animals. The technology, described …

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Published on February 22, 2023 - 22:00 GMT

Several pre-existing RSV lineages powered the 2022 surge

Late last year, thousands of children across the United States were hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but unlike previous RSV surges, this one affected a larger number of people and a broader range of age groups, including older children …

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Published on October 31, 2022 - 16:53 GMT

First large genetic study of bipolar disorder in Asian populations launches

Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population resides in Asian countries, but only 10 percent of participants of genetic studies are of Asian descent. And that disparity is even greater in studies of psychiatric conditions, where participants are almost all …

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Published on April 6, 2022 - 17:57 GMT

Researchers find first strong genetic risk factor for bipolar disorder

The main treatment for bipolar disorder, lithium, was approved a half-century ago but doesn't help all patients and has significant side effects. Little progress has been made in finding better therapies, in part because scientists don’t fully …

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