New MIT Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES)

I miss being a student at MIT. Those were definitely some of the best days of my life. Recently, MIT launched their Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES). Although HST was there when I was a student, IMES simply didn't exist.

The Institute for Medical Engineering and Science pioneers novel research and graduate education paradigms to advance health and educate leaders working at the convergence of engineering, science, and clinical medicine. IMES brings together MIT’s strengths in engineering, basic science, innovation, and entrepreneurship with clinical practice and research through its strategic partnerships with collaborating Boston area hospitals and biotech and medical device companies.

Based at IMES, the Medical Electronic Device Realization Center (MEDRC) aims to develop disruptive medical device technologies and is supported by a consortium of companies.

Through the Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology Program (HST), students can also pursue degrees in the following programs:

• Biomedical Enterprise Program (BEP)
• Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering (MEBE)
• Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP)

You can learn more about the MIT IMES program here.

Conquering Cancer through the Convergence of Science and Engineering

If you're in the Boston area, you won't want to miss this symposium at MIT:

MIT150 Symposia: Conquering Cancer through the Convergence of Science and Engineering

Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Time: 8:30am - 5:00pm
Location: Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue

Life sciences and engineering converge on cancer at MIT. As our faculty and students begin to chart the next course in cancer research, we will celebrate the unique role they have played in its history and illustrate how and why MIT researchers are converging their disciplines to conquer cancer.

A series of moderated panel discussions—to include top biologists, leading clinical experts, technologists, and biomedical engineers—will engage the audience in exploration of three topics:

* What were the defining (and teaching) moments in the first three decades of the War on Cancer?
* How is convergence changing the cancer research paradigm at MIT?
* What clinical results can we expect to come from the deployment of new approaches to cancer research?

MIT Research: Monitoring Cancer Tumor Growth

MIT students are having so much fun with research these days. Nanotechnology has taken biomedical research to an entirely new level. In many ways, this research reminds me of my days at MIT when I was involved in some biomedical cancer research. I was working on biopsy needles that involved hyperthermia treatment, but this story is about an implantable device that continuously monitors how a malignant tumor responds to treatment. Researchers at MIT engineered a tiny cylindrical, 5-millimeter implant that contains magnetic nanoparticles coated with antibodies. Can you do that?

Lead author of the research paper (published in Biosensors & Bioelectronics) is Karen Daniel, a recent MIT PhD recipient. Other authors are recent PhD recipients Grace Kim (not related - as far as I know) and Christophoros Vassiliou; Marilyn Galindo, research affiliate in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; Alexander Guimares, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital; Ralph Weissleder, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School; Al Charest, visiting assistant professor of biology at MIT; and David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research Professor Robert Langer.

The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence and the National Science Foundation. Image source: MIT news site.

MIT Targeting Tumors Using Gold Nanorods

The researchers at MIT are at it again. This time, they're using gold nanorods to target malignant tumors. It's great to see so much research in nanotechnology. The team includes an MIT graduate student named Geoffrey von Maltzahn (who won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, in part for his work with the nanorods). von Maltzahn developed the tumor-homing particles with Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD, professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Doctor Sangeeta Bhatia and I actually have a few things in common: we both studied mechanical engineering at MIT (I did my undergrad while she got her master's), we were both in Boston in the late nineties, and we both went to medical school (but different medical schools). Now, she holds 12 issued or pending patents and has worked in industry at Pfizer, Genetics Institute, ICI Pharmaceuticals, and Organogenesis.