Many viruses infect their hosts through mucosal surfaces such as the lining of the respiratory tract. MIT researchers have now developed a vaccination strategy that can create an army of T cells that are ready and waiting at those surfaces, offering a quicker response to viral invaders. The researchers showed that they could induce a strong … Continued
In the largest study of its kind to date, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard have found the new mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to be highly effective in producing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in pregnant and lactating women. The study also demonstrated … Continued
Last week, Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President L. Rafael Reif, and Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne wrote an op-ed to outline the importance of “drastic action” to protect the health of our nation, including the efforts of America‘s leading research universities.
When someone struggles to open a lock with a key that doesn’t quite seem to work, sometimes jiggling the key a bit will help. Now, new research from MIT suggests that coronaviruses, including the one that causes Covid-19, may use a similar method to trick cells into letting the viruses inside. The findings could be … Continued
Curiosity-driven basic science, led by Phillip Sharp, a professor within the Department of Biology and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, in the 1970s laid the groundwork for today’s leading vaccines against the novel coronavirus.
Dealing with a global pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of millions of people. A team of MIT and Harvard University researchers has shown that they can measure those effects by analyzing the language that people use to express their anxiety online. Using machine learning to analyze the text of more than 800,000 … Continued
This week, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) showed that the vaccines’ effectiveness may vary depending on a person’s race, and said that the vaccines should be tested robustly across populations with diverse genetic backgrounds. Using advanced machine learning AI methods that examined a form of vaccine similar to Moderna and … Continued
MIT chemists have determined the molecular structure of a protein found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This protein, called the envelope protein E, forms a cation-selective channel and plays a key role in the virus’s ability to replicate itself and stimulate the host cell’s inflammation response. If researchers could devise ways to block this channel, they may … Continued
The Pandemic Response CoLab is a joint project by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI), MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative, and founding member MilliporeSigma. The project is an open, online collaboration platform that invites anyone, from individuals to groups, from communities to businesses, to develop actionable solutions for challenges presented by the Covid-19 … Continued
Researchers at MIT say they′ve developed an algorithm that can diagnose COVID-19 by the sound of someone′s cough, even if that person is asymptomatic. In a paper published in the IEEE Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, the team reports that their approach distinguishes between infected and healthy individuals through “forced-cough” recordings contributed via … Continued