Can a prize designed for the high-tech challenge of helping to get people into space be applied to solving low-tech, down-to-Earth problems of life and death? Pose the question to a class of MIT students and two out of three give a resounding "yes." And the other third adds a strong "maybe."

That was the outcome of the first class held under a new collaboration between MIT and the California-based X-Prize Foundation, whose founder and chairman is MIT alumnus Peter Diamandis '83, SM '88 HST '89. The class had the task of trying to design a new $10 million X-Prize aimed at addressing health-care issues in the developing world.

The class was taught by Erika Wagner SM '02, PhD '07, an instructor in the School of Engineering and director of the new collaboration, X-Prize Lab @ MIT. The class formed three teams, each of which was to come up with a detailed proposal.  Read More...

A decade ago, when the Wharton Business Plan Competition (BPC) began, the Internet dominated discussions about entrepreneurship. That, of course, was before the bubble burst and many dot.coms were revealed to be, in the words of New Yorker writer John Cassidy, little more than dot.cons.

These days, the Internet remains a critical enabler of commerce, but no one pretends that staking out a little real estate on the web will ensure business success. Instead, student entrepreneurs who compete in the Wharton BPC have recently turned their attention to another promising arena -- healthcare, specifically biotechnology, that combination of medicine, basic science and engineering that has unraveled the human genome and, if it lives up to its promise, could deliver a raft of new treatments for a variety of diseases.

Five of the eight finalists at this year's Venture Finals -- the culminating event in the yearlong business plan competition -- offered up ideas for businesses that could help people live longer or less painful lives. They ranged from one as simple as creating better padding for the junctures between prostheses and amputees' residual limbs to one as complex as using nanoparticles -- infinitesimally small specks of matter -- to better diagnose and treat cancer.  Read More...

Genetic differences may explain the greater risk for prostate cancer among Caucasian men compared with Hispanic men, which could help clinicians predict who is more likely to develop the disease, according to a paper published in the May 15, 2008, issue Read more

Maxi-K gene therapy may be a safe and effective future option for men whose erectile dysfunction is not treatable with oral therapy. Read more

Transplantation of muscle-derived stem cells may provide a safe and effective treatment for patients suffering from urinary incontinence following a surgical procedure. Read more

By inducing a specific gene to increase expression of a key enzyme, vitamin D protects healthy prostate cells from the damage and injuries that can lead to cancer, University of Rochester Medical Center researchers report.

“Many epidemiological studies have suggested the beneficial properties of vitamin D,” said Yi-Fen Lee, associate professor of urology at the Medical Center who led the research. “Our findings reflect what we see in those studies and demonstrate that vitamin D not only can be used as a therapy for prostate cancer, it can prevent prostate cancer from happening.”

The International Journal of Cancer published the findings in its June 15 issue.    Read More...

A daring attempt to use gene therapy to treat a rare, devastating disorder that destroys the brains of children has shown signs of slowing the disease's progression, according to a new paper. However, some experts aren't convinced that the treatment, which involved dripping a virus into young patients' brains, actually worked.

The children all have late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (LINCL), a form of the neurodegenerative disorder Batten disease. They were born without a working copy of CLN2, a gene whose protein helps lysosomes--the cell's garbage-disposing structures--break down a waste product called lipofuscin. As a result, lipofuscin builds up and eventually destroy neurons, causing the brain to shrink. Children with LINCL seem normal at birth but by age 2 to 4 show signs of developmental problems and often have seizures. Eventually blind and confined to a wheelchair, they usually die by 8 to 12 years of age.

A few years ago, gene therapy researcher Ronald Crystal and colleagues at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City successfully slowed LINCL in mice using gene therapy in the brain. To test the safety of the approach in humans, the team treated 10 LINCL patients ranging in age from 3 to 10 years, starting in 2004. After anesthetizing the children, the researchers drilled six 2-mm-wide holes in their skulls. They then dripped in a solution of a harmless virus that had been modified to carry a good copy of the CLN2 gene. Four children had an immune response, but it was mild. One patient developed seizures 2 weeks later and died 49 days after the surgery. However, she did not have brain inflammation, and Crystal says it was not clear whether her death had anything to do with the gene therapy.  Read More...

By taking advantage of the natural movement of liquid through paper, researchers at Harvard's Whitesides Research Group may have found a way to make microfluidics technology much cheaper. The result could be disposable diagnostic tests simple and abundant enough for use in the developing world.

The field of microfluidics deals with the precise manipulation of tiny quantities of liquid. One of its most promising applications is the so-called lab-on-a-chip, which can work with much smaller fluid samples than larger devices require, potentially allowing for more portable diagnostic tools. But existing microfluidic chips are generally made from comparatively expensive materials like silicon, glass, or plastic and have tiny pumps and valves that can be difficult to manufacture.

Now, Harvard's George Whitesides and his team have built a microfluidic device on a square of paper the size of a pinky fingernail. "It's the first example I've heard of paper microfluidics," says Albert Folch, a bioengineer at the University of Washington who works on microfabrication. "It's really clever because it uses paper as a substrate, which is universally available."   Read More...

WASHINGTON — After being pummeled for weeks on Capitol Hill over the president’s budget, Food and Drug Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach has written Congress that the agency needs an immediate infusion of $275 million to ensure that imported foods, drugs and medical devices are safe.

The request was made in a letter to Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, that offers a detailed spending plan for such things as opening new foreign offices, increasing inspections and constructing new databases to track drug hazards.

Presidential appointees rarely diverge so forcefully from the president’s own spending plans, or at least avoid doing so in writing. Dr. von Eschenbach’s action surprised agency observers and was taken as perhaps a sign of the president’s waning influence in the closing months of his presidency.  Read More...

A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing Read more