Building organs block by block
Tissue engineering has long held promise for building new organs to replace damaged livers, blood vessels and other body parts. However, one major obstacle is getting cells grown in a lab dish to form...
View ArticlePutting up a struggle against cancer
MIT scientists have discovered that cells lining the blood vessels secrete molecules that suppress tumor growth and keep cancer cells from invading other tissues, a finding that could lead to a new way...
View ArticleRecreating human livers, in mice
Although scientists commonly use mice for biomedical research, they are not always helpful for pharmaceutical testing. Because mouse livers react to drugs differently than human livers, they often...
View ArticleMimicking biological complexity, in a tiny particle
Tiny particles made of polymers hold great promise for targeted delivery of drugs and as structural scaffolds for building artificial tissues. However, current production methods for such...
View ArticleA heart of gold
A team of researchers at MIT and Children’s Hospital Boston has built cardiac patches studded with tiny gold wires that could be used to create pieces of tissue whose cells all beat in time, mimicking...
View ArticleLanger honored for achievements in biomedical engineering
Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, who has enabled the creation of artificial skin now used for burn victims and skin-ulcer patients and whose work may someday enable the...
View ArticleDARPA and NIH to fund ‘human body on a chip’ research
Researchers in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT will receive up to $32 million over the next five years from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National...
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Success of engineered tissue depends on where it’s grown
Laura Indolfi, left, holds up a sample of a sponge-like scaffold that she and Elazer Edelman, right, used to show that implanted cells’ therapeutic properties depend on their shape.Photo: Patrick...
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Merging tissue and electronics
A 3-D reconstructed confocal fluorescence micrograph of a tissue scaffold.Image: Charles M. Lieber and Daniel S. Kohane. To control the three-dimensional shape of engineered tissue, researchers grow...
View ArticleReplicating living structures
Living systems are made of complex architectural organization of various cell types in defined microenvironments. The intricate interactions between different cell types control the specific functions...
View ArticleNew injectable gels toughen up after entering the body
Gels that can be injected into the body, carrying drugs or cells that regenerate damaged tissue, hold promise for treating many types of disease, including cancer. However, these injectable gels don’t...
View ArticleMaking ‘nanospinning’ practical
Nanofibers — strands of material only a couple hundred nanometers in diameter — have a huge range of possible applications: scaffolds for bioengineered organs, ultrafine air and water filters, and...
View ArticlePrecisely engineering 3-D brain tissues
Borrowing from microfabrication techniques used in the semiconductor industry, MIT and Harvard Medical School (HMS) engineers have developed a simple and inexpensive way to create three-dimensional...
View ArticleTissue engineering: Growing new organs, and more
With the recent launch of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, MIT News examines research with the potential to reshape medicine and health care through new scientific knowledge, novel...
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A step closer to artificial livers
Prometheus, the mythological figure who stole fire from the gods, was punished for this theft by being bound to a rock. Each day, an eagle swept down and fed on his liver, which then grew back to be...
View ArticleNew way to target an old foe: malaria
Although malaria has been eradicated in many countries, including the United States, it still infects more than 200 million people worldwide, killing nearly a million every year. In regions where...
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