Peripheral neuropathy afflicts millions of diabetes patients around the world, causing sensations from tingling to pain to complete numbness. For our season finale, we discussed peripheral neuropathy with bioengineer Christian Metallo, whose recent research has uncovered how insulin-regulated metabolism of lipids and amino acids contributes to peripheral neuropathy. Dr. Metallo spoke with us about the inspiration for this research and explained his team’s key findings about the links between...

Proteins, with their unique structures, have evolved over billions of years to perform a host of different functions essential to the processes that keep us alive. Using the same principles as artificial intelligence chatbots, scientists at Salesforce developed an AI language model called ProGen. Using large protein databases, ProGen was trained on the biological syntax of amino acid sequences, allowing it to design functional 3D protein structures. These proteins have useful properties that...

Respiratory infections are a major cause of mortality worldwide and pose unique challenges for healthcare interventions due to the antibiotic-resistant nature of many respiratory pathogens. For patients that require ventilation, an additional complicating factor is a protective substance produced by bacteria known as a biofilm. Biofilms can result in chronic infections, preventing the body and antibiotics from clearing the bacteria away. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Maria Lluch-Senar, a...

Have you ever had a wound that took a long time to heal? What if the bandage on your next wound could heal you faster by harnessing the power of your movement? Dr. Zong-Hong Lin and Dr. Snigdha Barman used their bioengineering expertise to create such a system. Their dressing uses embedded piezoelectric devices to convert the body’s motion into electricity, which powers multiple functions designed to overcome specific challenges of wound healing in clinical settings. The dressing, which can...

Vaccines have revolutionized modern medicine, preventing, and even eradicating devastating diseases worldwide. Vaccines leveraging emerging technologies in cellular engineering may lead a revolution in medicine again, starting in brain tumors. In this episode, we hear from Dr. Khalid Shah, a researcher at the forefront of such developments. Dr. Shah and his team are engineering brain tumor cells to create a treatment with direct tumor-killing effects, addressing incomplete tumor margins...

Vaccines have revolutionized modern medicine, preventing, and even eradicating devastating diseases worldwide. Vaccines leveraging emerging technologies in cellular engineering may lead a revolution in medicine again, starting in brain tumors. In this episode, we hear from Dr. Khalid Shah, a researcher at the forefront of such developments. Dr. Shah and his team are engineering brain tumor cells to create a treatment with direct tumor-killing effects, addressing incomplete tumor margins...

When chemist and Nobel Laureate Carolyn Bertozzi was leaving grad school, she asked her professors for letters of recommendation to pursue a postdoc in immunology. They warned her that she was flushing her career down the toilet. Instead, this was one in a series of opportunities that Dr. Bertozzi recognized and pursued, in a career that has changed the way modern chemists work. For this Fireside Chat episode, Dr. Bertozzi told us how she has made a career out of seizing opportunities in the...

Social media has infiltrated our society more quickly than any other technological advancement. Kids today have access to endless content and social connections by way of the internet than the generations before them. What effect does a 24/7 connection have on our mental well-being? How does growing up in an age of social media affect our relationships and views of ourselves? In this 360 Perspective episode, we’re exploring the issues surrounding social media and mental health. First, Luisa...

Varying by country, 5-18% of babies are born pre-term, putting them at risk of medical and developmental complications. While advances in care have greatly improved mortality outcomes for these infants, evidence-based interventions to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes have been more elusive—until now. In this episode, we interview Dr. Martha Welch, a pioneer in pediatric psychiatry, and Dr. Sampsa Vanhatalo, a leading researcher in infant neurophysiology, on their recent work demonstrating...

Have you ever picked up a video game for the first time and felt completely lost? After a few failed attempts, you surely got better and better each time. In the same way, we can learn how to play a game or use a new piece of technology, scientists at Cortical Labs are teaching brain cells in a Petri dish to play the 1970s arcade classic Pong. With electrical feedback stimulation, the cells can learn to move a virtual platform and volley a ball back and forth with impressive accuracy. In this...

As a girl growing up on a remote island farm in western Norway, May-Britt Moser looked at the people and animals around her and wondered what was happening inside them, or in her words, “how the brain is generating behavior, memory, our cognition, our emotions”. Over four decades as a psychologist and neurologist, Dr. Moser has met with astonishing success in answering these questions, leading her team to remarkable discoveries of the neural mechanisms by which we mark time, form memories,...

The prevalence of Parkinson’s disease has grown more than 50% in recent years, and early onset diagnosis is increasing at an even faster rate. Due to its slow, subtle progression and variable response to medications, this condition can be difficult for clinicians to manage. The work of Dr. Dina Katabi, Director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, may change that. Her team has shown that discrete, radio wave emitting devices in the home can be used to track patient...

Over 2.8 million people worldwide live with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the protective myelin coating around nerves in the brain and spinal cord. People with MS can experience pain, fatigue, memory problems, vision loss, and other debilitating symptoms. MS is relatively rare, but new research has found a causal link between Epstein-Barr Virus, one of the most common human viruses, and MS. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Alberto Ascherio, a...

Imagine having a telescope that could allow you to see whether a syndrome will manifest in the future. Imagine being able to use it to cure diseases before they can even occur. For Dr. Thomas McElrath, MD-PhD in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, this telescope exists and is called LIFECODES. The LIFECODES Biobank is an extensive biobank of samples collected for over 14 years with data on over 6,000 pregnancies. It is used to look at biomarkers...

We do not often think about our past as a species. What are the changes that made us like we are now? When, where, and why did these changes happen? Can we go back in history and find the answers to these questions? Archaeologists reconstruct human behavior in the past, mainly using things that people left behind, or this is what they used to do. In recent years, the possibility to study ancient DNA has revolutionized our way of looking at the past. Ancient DNA allows us to explore human...

Alzheimer’s disease affects millions of people and their families. Scientists have made extraordinary progress characterizing the pathology of Alzheimer’s and working to find effective treatments. As scientists continue to unlock more and more about the disease and how to combat it, how can we address the challenges currently facing doctors, patients, and caregivers? In this 360 Perspective episode, we talk about the history of Alzheimer’s, the stigma surrounding it, disparities in...

Puberty may seem like a chaotic phase of life, but the process is precisely controlled by a series of timed signals beginning in the brain. Before we are born, a set of neurons secreting GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) migrate to the brain and set up the hub that will control reproductive processes. During this time, these neurons recruit newborn astrocytes, and they stick together throughout life. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Vincent Prévot, Director of the Development and...

The disease that would ultimately become known AIDS was first diagnosed in June 1981. At that time, researchers had not yet determined what caused it, and by the time most patients presented with symptoms, they had only months to live. After four decades of effort by the global research community, the development of promising experimental HIV vaccines has now finally come true. We have interviewed Dr. Paolo Lusso, Chief of the Viral Pathogenesis Section at the National Institute of Allergy...

“Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin' is knowin' what to throw away and knowin' what to keep...”. Have you ever listened to “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers? He knew how to play the game right, and it turns out that so does our body! Dr. Phil Jones, a Professor of Cancer Development at the University of Cambridge UK, works on uncovering the dynamics of cell behavior. He found that human cells play a dice game, balancing the odds between production and shedding. This game protects the...

In the words of Dr. Ali Khademhosseini, "There is no question that tissue engineering will one day transform medicine.” After his first research experience at the University of Toronto, Dr. Khademhosseini fell in love with tissue engineering and its significant and life-changing impact on healthcare. Today, at the Terasaki Institute in Los Angeles, Dr. Khademhosseini focuses his research on developing various approaches to merge microfabrication techniques with hydrogel biomaterials to...

In 1846, Dr. John Collins Warren and William T. G. Morton performed the first public demonstration of surgery under an anesthetic. Today, anesthesiologist and statistician Emery Brown combines his fields of expertise and applies a computational approach to answer questions about neuroscience and to research how anesthetics interact with the central nervous system. Brown is a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, and MIT, and in this episode, he highlights that, while...

Have you ever felt demeaned, harassed, or humiliated at work? During their training, our future doctors and scientists may often encounter hostile work environments upheld by their supervisors. The academic culture emboldens the bullies and discourages students from speaking up when they experience harmful treatment. Why do bullies continue to thrive in academia, and how can the scientific community take action?  In this episode, we discuss abusive supervision in academia with Dr. Sherry...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is considered one of the major innovations in the world of diagnostic radiology. By virtue of its flexible and noninvasive nature, MRI is one of the best tools we have to image the human body. However, conventional MRI scanners are gigantic machines that cost millions of dollars and weigh up to three tons - they are therefore limited in their distribution and point-of-care applicability. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could shrink conventional MRI scanners into...

How wonderful would it be if you could deposit your skin cells at a medical facility and get an organ you need within weeks, ready to be transplanted? For decades, scientists have relentlessly worked to recapitulate functionally and physiologically relevant human organs in the lab. Some approaches rely on engineering an unfeasible number of genes in cells or on external cues like growth factors and mechanical signals. But these organs are far from overcoming the barriers of complexity,...