After his infectious disease training at MGH and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Bhattacharyya served as chief resident at MGH and began considering his future as a physician-scientist. He saw how genomic technology had progressed during the seven …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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’ …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
