[Editors] MIT Research Digest, May 2006

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT Research Digest, May 2006
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For Immediate Release
MONDAY, MAY 1, 2006
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402
Email: thomson at mit.edu

A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research advances at 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the latest MIT 
research news, go to http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html

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IN THIS ISSUE: Microparticles * SPHERES in Space
Potential Cancer Treatment * Mixing Matter, Antimatter
Of Virus's and Batteries * Strange New Planets
Cells in 3D * Nature's Medicines * Lazy Eye
Hope for Alzheimer's * Visual Deprivation
MIT & Lake Pontchartrain * Stem Cell Magic...and Development
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MICROPARTICLES
MIT chemical engineers have devised an elegant new method for 
creating complex polymeric microparticles that could have 
applications in  a variety of fields, from drug delivery in medicine 
to the creation of building blocks for the photonic materials that 
carry light. The particles can also add texture to skin creams and 
color to inks. The new synthesis method gives researchers an 
extraordinary degree of control over the shape and chemical 
properties of the microparticles, which range in size from about 1 
millionth of a meter to a millimeter. "We have precise control over 
shape and an ability to create patterned chemical regions, that is 
rather unprecedented," said Assistant Professor Patrick Doyle of 
chemical engineering, one of the authors of a report appearing in the 
online edition of Nature Materials in April. Doyle says he hopes 
other researchers will adopt his team's new technique of continuous 
flow lithography, which allows for faster, easier production of 
microparticles of diverse shape, size and chemical composition. The 
research was supported by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/microparticles.html
PHOTO, IMAGES AVAILABLE

SPHERES IN SPACE
A Russian rocket launched late last month has carried the first of 
three small, spherical satellites developed at MIT to the 
International Space Station -- a major step toward building 
space-based robotic telescopes and other systems. The MIT SPHERES 
project -- the acronym stands for Synchronized Position Hold Engage 
Re-orient Experimental Satellites -- involves satellites about the 
size of volleyballs that are designed to float weightless in space 
while maintaining a precise position. A gang of such instruments, 
floating free in space, could serve as parts of a massive telescope 
looking for planets near other stars. The first critical test of the 
SPHERE is set for May 18 -- inside the space station. Two additional 
SPHERES are scheduled to reach the space station, carried up by the 
U.S. space shuttle, before the end of the year. "Testing inside the 
space station will allow us to mature these technologies in a less 
risky micro-gravity environment," meaning inside the warm, air-filled 
station, rather than outside in the hazardous conditions of space, 
said David Miller, an associate professor in MIT's Department of 
Aeronautics and Astronautics. This work is funded by DARPA, with 
additional support from NASA.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/mini-satellites.html
VIDEO, PHOTOS AVAILABLE

POTENTIAL CANCER TREATMENT
Ultra-small particles loaded with medicine - and aimed with the 
precision of a rifle - are offering a promising new way to strike at 
cancer, according to researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women's 
Hospital. In a paper that appeared in an April issue of the 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reports a 
way to custom design nanoparticles so they home in on dangerous 
cancer cells, then enter the cells to deliver lethal doses of 
chemotherapy. Normal, healthy cells remain unscathed. The team 
conducted experiments first on cells growing in laboratory dishes, 
and then on mice bearing human prostate tumors. The tumors shrank 
dramatically, and all of the treated mice survived the study; the 
untreated control animals did not. "A single injection of our 
nanoparticles completely eradicated the tumors in five of the seven 
treated animals, and the remaining animals also had significant tumor 
reduction, compared to the controls," said Dr. Omid Farokhzad of 
Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Farokhzad 
and MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer led the research, which was 
supported, in part, by the National Cancer Institute through the 
Harvard-MIT Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/prostate.html
PHOTO, IMAGE, VIDEO AVAILABLE

MIXING MATTER, ANTIMATTER
Like Jekyll and Hyde, some subatomic particles are able to act as 
both matter and their antimatter counterparts. Known as mixing, this 
process has been known to quantum physicists for 50 years. Now it has 
been measured for the first time by an international collaboration 
involving MIT scientists. The work could lead to a better 
understanding of the early universe, when these particles were 
present in great abundance. The achievement was announced in April by 
Ivan Furic (MIT Ph.D. 2004), now at the University of Chicago, 
representing the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) collaboration at 
the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Christoph Paus, associate 
professor of physics (and Furic's thesis advisor at MIT), represents 
MIT in the CDF collaboration, a team of 700 physicists. Paus, a 
member of MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science, led the data analysis 
effort involving 80 scientists from 27 institutions. The CDF team 
reported rapid-fire transitions between matter and antimatter of a 
subatomic particle called the Bs (pronounced "B sub s") meson. They 
found that this particle oscillates between matter and antimatter 
states at a mind-boggling 3 trillion times per second. The Bs itself 
is composed of other subatomic particles: a heavy "bottom quark" 
bound to a "strange anti-quark."
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/antimatter-0412.html

OF VIRUS'S AND BATTERIES
MIT scientists have harnessed the construction talents of tiny 
viruses to build ultra-small "nanowire" structures for use in very 
thin lithium-ion batteries. By manipulating a few genes inside these 
viruses, the team was able to coax the organisms to grow and 
self-assemble into a functional electronic device. The goal of the 
work, led by MIT Professors Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond and 
Yet-Ming Chiang, is to create batteries that cram as much electrical 
energy into as small or lightweight a package as possible. The 
batteries they hope to build could range from the size of a grain of 
rice up to the size of existing hearing aid batteries.  A report on 
the work appeared in the journal Science. Belcher, the Germeshausen 
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological 
Engineering; Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and 
Engineering; and Hammond, the Mark A. Hyman Professor of Chemical 
Engineering, led a team of five additional researchers. The work was 
supported by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/virus-battery.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE

STRANGE NEW PLANETS
Citing the first direct evidence that the fiery debris of a dying 
star may swirl around long after the star is obliterated, MIT 
astrophysicists reported in a recent issue of Nature that this 
orbiting disk of debris could also lead to the birth of strange new 
planets. This first-of-its-kind observation of a disk of debris 
around a long-dead star, made with NASA's infrared Spitzer Space 
Telescope, could be the long-sought missing link behind the existence 
of the first planets discovered outside our solar system. In 1992, 
three Earth-sized planets were observed circling an exploded star 
called a pulsar. The MIT finding confirms what researchers had 
surmised from indirect evidence: These exotic planets were probably 
formed out of a dusty debris disk. "Pulsars emit a tremendous amount 
of high-energy radiation, yet within this harsh environment, we have 
a disk that looks a lot like those around young stars where planets 
are formed," said principal investigator Deepto Chakrabarty, 
associate professor of physics with the MIT Kavli Institute for 
Astrophysics and Space Research. This work is supported by NASA.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/planet-birth.html
PHOTOS AVAILABLE

CELLS IN 3D
MIT bioengineers have devised a new technique that makes it possible 
to learn more about how cells are organized in tissues and 
potentially even to regrow cells for repairing areas of the body 
damaged by disease, accidents or aging. The method gives them 
unprecedented control over organizing cells outside the body in three 
dimensions, which is how they exist inside the body. It uses 
electricity to move cells into a desired position, followed by light 
to lock them into place within a gel that resembles living tissue. 
Cells traditionally have been studied in two dimensions in a Petri 
dish, but certain cells such as cartilage and stem cells behave 
differently in two dimensions than in three. The work, published in 
the May issue of Nature Methods, is led by MIT Associate Professor 
Sangeeta Bhatia of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and 
Technology. The research was funded by The Whitaker Foundation, the 
NSF, the NIH, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and NASA.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/3d.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE

NATURE'S MEDICINES
After years of wondering how organisms managed to create 
self-medications such as anti-fungal agents, MIT chemists and 
colleagues have discovered the simple secret. Scientists already knew 
that a particular enzyme was able to coax a reaction out of stubborn 
chemical concoctions to generate a large family of medically valuable 
compounds called halogenated natural products. The question was, how 
do they do it? Chemists would love to have that enzyme's capability 
so they could efficiently reproduce, or slightly re-engineer, those 
products, which include antibiotics, anti-tumor agents, and 
fungicides. Thanks to MIT Associate Professor Catherine Drennan's 
recent crystallography sleuthing, the secret to the enzyme's enviable 
prowess has come to light and it appears almost anti-climactic. It's 
simply a matter of the size of one of its parts. The research was 
partially funded by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/drennan-chemistry.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE

LAZY EYE
In a study that challenges conventional thinking about the condition 
known as lazy eye, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for 
Learning and Memory show that it's the quality, not the quantity, of 
images and light striking the retina that causes one eye to lose 
function. The study appears in the May issue of the Journal of 
Neurophysiology. Amblyopia, or lazy eye, is a developmental disorder 
characterized by poor or blurry vision in an eye that is structurally 
normal. The problem is caused by either no transmission or poor 
transmission of visual images to the brain for a sustained period 
during early childhood. Amblyopia has been estimated to affect 1 
percent to 5 percent of the population. "It's been known for a long 
time that if you are born with cataracts in one eye, you will go 
blind in that eye," said study co-author Mark Bear, Picower Professor 
of Neuroscience. "Depriving one eye of crisp images rapidly causes 
cortical neurons to lose responsiveness to the deprived eye." While 
it was thought that inactivity caused the neurons associated with the 
deprived eye to wither -- a case of "use it or lose it" -- Bear and 
colleagues at Brown University report that a blurry image is worse 
than no image at all.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/lazyeye.html

HOPE FOR ALZHEIMER'S?
MIT brain researchers have developed a "cocktail" of dietary 
supplements, now in human clinical trials, that holds promise for the 
treatment of Alzheimer's disease. For years, doctors have encouraged 
people to consume foods such as fish that are rich in omega-3 fatty 
acids because they appear to improve memory and other brain 
functions. The MIT research suggests that a cocktail treatment of 
omega-3 fatty acids and two other compounds normally present in the 
blood, could delay the cognitive decline seen in Alzheimer's disease, 
which afflicts an estimated 4 million to 5 million Americans. "It's 
been enormously frustrating to have so little to offer people that 
have (Alzheimer's) disease," said Richard Wurtman, the Cecil H. Green 
Distinguished Professor of Neuropharmacology at MIT, who led the 
research team. The study will appear in the May 9 issue of Brain 
Research and Wurtman will present the research at the International 
Academy of Nutrition and Aging 2006 Symposium on Nutrition and 
Alzheimer's Disease/Cognitive Decline on May 2. The research was 
supported by the NIH, the Center for Brain Sciences and Metabolism 
Charitable Trust and the Turkish Academy of Sciences.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/alzheimers.html

VISUAL DEPRIVATION
Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have 
identified an insulin-like growth factor that prevents the usual 
effects of visual deprivation in the brain. This key molecule may one 
day provide a way to manipulate connections among neurons in the 
developing brain, and possibly even in the adult brain. Researchers 
may use it to repair brain cell connections lost or damaged through 
injury or diseases such as Alzheimer's, or to treat such conditions 
as autism. The work was reported April 22 in the advance online 
edition of Nature Neuroscience. It was supported by the NIH and the 
Simons Foundation.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/nature-nurture.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE

MIT & LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN
Eight civil and environmental engineering undergraduates spent their 
spring break on Lake Pontchartrain in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana 
doing research that may eventually contribute to minimizing the 
health effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters like it. 
After Katrina struck New Orleans, several sections of the levee 
system collapsed, flooding more than 80 percent of the city. The city 
pumped much of the floodwater into Lake Ponchartrain, which borders 
the city on the north. The MIT students traveled to New Orleans to 
study the lake's sediment. There they collected sediment and water 
samples as well as background chemistry measurements and E. coli 
counts. The samples were sent back to MIT where they will be studied 
for traces of heavy metals and pathogenic bacteria. The students were 
accompanied by Associate Professor Martin Polz of civil and 
environmental engineering (CEE), CEE Professor Heidi Nepf and CEE 
lecturer Sheila Frankel. The students' travel and living expenses 
were paid for by a grant from the Kurtz Family Foundation given to 
the MIT President's Office for Hurricane Katrina relief.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/neworleans-0426.html
PHOTOS AVAILABLE

STEM CELL MAGIC
New research promises to help scientists explain the magic behind 
embryonic stem cells, cells with the extraordinary ability to 
transform into almost any cell type in the body. A team of 
researchers, including several from MIT and the Broad Institute of 
MIT and Harvard, have discovered unique molecular imprints coupled to 
DNA in the embryonic stem (ES) cells of mice. These imprints, or 
"signatures," appear near the master genes that control embryonic 
development and probably coordinate their activity in the early 
stages of cell differentiation. Not only do these findings help to 
establish the basis for the cells' seemingly unlimited potential, 
they also suggest ways to understand why ordinary cells are so 
limited in their abilities to repair or replace damaged cells. The 
work, described in an April issue of Cell, was funded by the NIH, 
Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Howard Hughes Medical 
Institute.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/stemcells-signatures.html

STEM CELL DEVELOPMENT
How humans manage to develop from a single fertilized egg into the 
trillions of cells that make up a mature adult remains a poorly 
understood process. Now, using both human and mouse embryonic stem 
cells, researchers from MIT, the Whitehead Institute and Harvard have 
mapped how a key developmental ingredient controls the genome. The 
map could be used to guide the fate of stem cells so that they could 
replace diseased or damaged cells. The mouse results were published 
in an April issue of Nature; the human results in an April issue of 
Cell. This work was funded by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/development.html

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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Assistant Director, Science & Engineering News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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