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Tumors depend heavily on certain genetic changes to thrive, and researchers have discovered many such “genetic dependencies” as targets for potential new cancer drugs. But Bill Sellers, director of the Broad’s Cancer Program, says the field needs fresh approaches to finding dependencies that could lead to new classes of more effective cancer drugs. “We don't often think hard enough about how to get to cures in cancer,” he said. Read more about the limitations of current approaches in cancer dependency research and what Sellers hopes to see in the future in a new Q&A.
Broad and MIT scientists have developed two agents, made of therapeutic nanoparticles and antibodies, that could be given to patients shortly before a blood draw to allow physicians to better detect tumor DNA in blood using a technology called liquid biopsy. The two injectable “priming agents” briefly slow down the clearance of circulating tumor DNA from the body, allowing levels of this DNA to temporarily increase in blood and be collected for testing. The team, including Viktor Adalsteinsson , Sangeeta Bhatia, and Christopher Love, says that these priming agents could improve the performance of liquid biopsies for cancer and potentially other diseases — akin to how contrast agents are given to patients to enhance medical imaging scans.
A new method, called Slide-tag, lets scientists capture both genetic and location information of individual cells using standard single-cell workflows in the lab. The technology builds on Slide-seq, and both were developed by the labs of Fei Chen and Evan Macosko. Slide-seq can map spatial patterns of genetic activity within tissues, but doesn’t reach single-cell resolution like the new Slide-tag method.
Microbial sequence databases contain a wealth of information about enzymes and other molecules that could be adapted for biotechnology. But these databases have grown so large in recent years that they’ve become difficult to search efficiently for enzymes of interest. Now, using big-data clustering approaches to rapidly search massive amounts of genomic data, a new search algorithm has revealed thousands of rare new CRISPR systems, including ones that could make edits to DNA in human cells and others that can target RNA.
Broad's Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics receives an additional commitment from Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., to advance technologies that could transform cancer care. The commitment of $20 million will propel efforts to develop, optimize, and demonstrate liquid biopsy technology along with other cancer diagnostics to enable more precise cancer care.
Seramount has recognized the Broad Institute as one of its 100 Best Companies, for the sixth time, recognizing Broad’s ongoing commitment and leadership in the areas of women’s representation and advancement, benefits, gender-neutral parental leave, well-being and mental health, and paid time off. Learn more about why Broad earned a spot on this year’s list at:
Scientists using machine learning tools to analyze biomedical data often turn to neural network algorithms, but before these models became popular, another simpler type of machine learning algorithm called kernel methods were commonly used. Kernel methods work by first applying straightforward operations to transform data and then training a simple model on the transformed data. Now, in a new paper published recently in Nature Communications, researchers at the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a new way of using kernel methods that could make them more useful for a wider range of applications, such as virtual drug screening. They came up with the first “transfer learning” techniques for kernel methods that can be successfully applied to large-scale datasets.
We’re excited that Kedrick Perry has just joined the Broad as our new Chief Equity Officer. He oversees the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Allyship (IDEA) Office, directing the continuation of Broad’s critical equity and inclusion priorities. Perry comes to Broad from Loyola University New Orleans, where he served as vice president for equity and inclusion, leading university-wide efforts to support and sustain inclusive excellence. “I'm tremendously excited and honored to be joining Broad,” Perry said. “For me, this job represents the culmination of almost two decades of work promoting DEI, access, and opportunity. I absolutely love working in DEI, even with all of its challenges, and I hope my passion for creating environments in which all community members can be their authentic selves and thrive is contagious."
Broad and Novo Nordisk are partnering on a new research alliance to identify therapeutic targets for type 2 diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases. The collaboration aims to identify disease-modifying interventions, with the goal of improving standards of care for people living with type 2 diabetes and cardiac fibrosis.
With no valid animal models of schizophrenia to study, it’s been unclear what biological mechanisms go awry to cause psychosis. Researchers in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad and at MIT characterized a mouse model that carries a rare genetic mutation that greatly increases risk of the disorder in humans. After examining multiple brain regions and cell types in mice lacking the Grin2a gene, which encodes a type of glutamate receptor involved in communication between neurons, the team observed wide-ranging changes in gene expression, brain cell activity, cell signaling, synapse protein composition, and animal behavior. The findings provide experimental evidence for two long-standing hypotheses that schizophrenia’s symptoms arise from altered signaling by glutamate and dopamine neurotransmitters, and the model represents a valuable new resource for future study.
