Issue 110

Community Notices

[Marble Center November Seminar postponed] Please join us in attending the MIT.nano Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture with Dr. Jennifer Lewis, Monday Nov 3rd, 4-5pm (10-250)

**Jennifer Lewis, PhD.** Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Wyss Institute, Harvard University

Jennifer Lewis is the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Her research focuses on the digital manufacturing of functional, structural, and biological materials. Multiple startups are commercializing technology from her lab ranging from 3D printed electronics to kidney therapeutics. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lewis has received numerous awards for her work, including the NAS James Prize for Science and Technology Integration.

34th Annual Irwin M. Arias Symposium: Bridging Basic Science and Liver Disease

The first Irwin M. Arias, M.D. Symposium was held in 1991, and the theme of the event was – as it remains today – Bridging Basic Science and Liver Disease. This unique one-day program brings together hundreds of leading biomedical scientists and physicians from across the globe and is designed to bridge the remarkable advances in basic biology and engineering with the understanding of liver diseases and their treatment. Research presented over the past 34 years has led to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of virtually all liver diseases in children and adults. With plenary talks from renowned researchers and a collection of three-minute micro talks delivered by trainee scientists, the Arias Symposium is a model in ‘bridging’ between the academic, industrial, and clinical research communities – even across disciplines.

The 2025 symposium will be offered both in-person and virtually. In-person attendees will benefit from a poster session and networking opportunities with plenary speakers and other attendees. Breakfast, lunch, and a networking reception will also be provided to in-person attendees.

We welcome participation from researchers at every stage of their careers, and invite them to share perspectives from their academic, industrial, and clinical research settings. Trainees who are interested in presenting a micro-talk (in-person or virtually) or poster (in-person only) should submit an abstract with their registration. The deadline to submit an abstract is October 31, 2025.

Learn more

News

$49.1 Million awarded from ARPA-H to Develop At-home Multi-Cancer-Early Detection Tests

Owlstone Medical (“Owlstone”) won an award of up to $49.1 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, (ARPA-H) for the Platform Optimizing SynBio for Early Intervention and Detection in Oncology (POSEIDON) program. POSEIDON aims to develop first-in-class synthetic-sensor based Multi-Cancer-Early Detection (MCED) tests for Stage I detection of 30+ solid tumors using only breath and urine samples that can be performed in the home and are available over the counter. Owlstone’s project, in partnership with the Bhatia Lab at MIT, Boston University, Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Qurin B.V., and Planned Systems International Inc, aims to overcome this challenge by delivering accurate, low-cost cancer screening for 30+ solid tumors to Americans aged 18 and older.

Group photo at the POSEIDON kickoff taken on October 2, 2025 in Water Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Almost 40% of Americans will develop cancer in their lifetimes and cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. The number of new cancer diagnoses in 2025 is estimated to be more than 2 million, with over 618,000 cancer deaths, equivalent to almost 1,700 deaths every day. The patient-related economic burden of cancer in 2019 was more than $21 billion in the U.S., of which treatment costs are by far the largest component. Critically, costs associated with late-stage diagnoses are much higher than early-stage, however cancer is difficult to detect early when it is most curable.

Drastically reducing late-stage diagnoses by detecting cancer at Stage I would not only increase treatment effectiveness, but also significantly reduce cancer care costs, restoring up to $2.3 trillion to the U.S. economy. Currently available screening technologies are unable to address this need due to performance limitations, and many Americans are too remote to access clinic and hospital-based screening programs. While emerging technologies such as liquid biopsy hold great promise for later stage cancer detection and to help guide therapy selection, performance in early-stage cancer detection has been insufficient.

The project involves the inhalation of a mix of pan-cancer and tumor-specific synthetic sensors from a single-use inhaler, which then circulate throughout the body and accumulate on the surface of cancer cells. The reporters produced by the sensors are either DNA-based which act as a readable barcode, or a set of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), supporting the detection of 36 cancers in total. These will be collected at-home or in clinic in urine samples and from breath respectively using portable collection and analysis devices. Results will be uploadable real-time to electronic health records (EHR) for rapid review by healthcare professionals, integrating seamlessly into clinical practice and digitally enabled care. Read more…

Engineering better care

(MIT Tech Review) Every Monday, more than a hundred members of Giovanni Traverso’s Laboratory for Translational Engineering (L4TE) fill a large classroom at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for their weekly lab meeting. With a social hour, food for everyone, and updates across disciplines from mechanical engineering to veterinary science, it’s a place where a stem cell biologist might weigh in on a mechanical design, or an electrical engineer might spot a flaw in a drug delivery mechanism. And it’s a place where everyone is united by the same goal: engineering new ways to deliver medicines and monitor the body to improve patient care.

Traverso’s weekly meetings bring together a mix of expertise that lab members say is unusual even in the most collaborative research spaces. But his lab—which includes its own veterinarian and a dedicated in vivo team—isn’t built like most. As an associate professor at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s, and an associate member of the Broad Institute, Traverso leads a sprawling research group that spans institutions, disciplines, and floors of lab space at MIT and beyond.

For a lab of this size—spread across MIT, the Broad, the Brigham, the Koch Institute, and The Engine—it feels remarkably personal. Traverso, who holds the Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professorship, is known for greeting every member by name and scheduling one-on-one meetings every two or three weeks, creating a sense of trust and connection that permeates the lab. Read more…

MIT invents human brain model with six major cell types to enable personalized disease research, drug discovery

A new 3D human brain tissue platform developed by MIT researchers is the first to integrate all major brain cell types, including neurons, glial cells and the vasculature into a single culture. Grown from individual donors’ induced pluripotent stem cells, these models—dubbed Multicellular Integrated Brains (miBrains)—replicate key features and functions of human brain tissue, are readily customizable through gene editing, and can be produced in quantities that support large-scale research. Although each unit is smaller than a dime, miBrains may be worth a great deal to researchers and drug developers who need more complex living lab models to better understand brain biology and treat diseases.

Cyan staining shows each of the six major cell types integrated in a miBrain culture.

“The miBrain is the only in vitro system that contains all six major cell types that are present in the human brain,” said Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor, director of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and senior author of the study describing miBrains, published Oct. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“In their first application, miBrains enabled us to discover how one of the most common genetic markers for Alzheimer’s disease alters cells’ interactions to produce pathology,” she added.

Tsai’s co-senior authors are Robert Langer, David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor, and Joel Blanchard, associate professor in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York and a former Tsai Laboratory postdoc. The study is led by Alice Stanton, former Koch Institute Convergence Scholar and postdoc in the Langer and Tsai labs, now assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Adele Bubnys, a former Tsai lab postdoc and current senior scientist at Arbor Biotechnologies. Read more…

Job opportunities

Program Coordinator, Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES). Join an inclusive community of students, administrative staff, research staff, and faculty who research, work, educate, and learn, at the convergence of engineering, science, and medicine to transform human health for all. In support of MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS), IMES serves as the administrative home for the MIT-MGB Seed Program and the MIT Program for Health Sciences + Semiconductors. Will support various programs and initiatives connected to IMES, with an emphasis on the MIT-MGB Seed Program; and work closely with Leadership to coordinate program activities such as oversight of proposals, reporting to stakeholders and events.

Scientist / Senior Scientist, Microfluidic LNP Formulation, Lila Sciences. As a Scientist/Senior Scientist on our Physical Sciences team, you will lead the design and development of advanced microfluidic platforms for the controlled synthesis and characterization of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and other nanocarriers. Your work will bridge the physical sciences and bioanalytical domains, enabling high-throughput experimentation integrated with real-time analytics. Collaborating across chemistry, biology, machine learning, and data science teams, you’ll help establish next-generation tools for therapeutic development and delivery.