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spotlight: MIT commemorates World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
For events around Boston, visit the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts. For more about MIT's groundbreaking research, read on. |
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Monitoring HIV: a new device that measures T cells in HIV patients will soon be tested in Africa In the poorest parts of Africa, where HIV/AIDS runs rampant and medical facilities are in short supply, many patients never know their T-cell count--an indicator of the health of the immune system that helps doctors decide when to start medication and assess how well the medicine is working. A group of scientists in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program aim to change that. Read more: from Technology Review Engineering a new attack on disease Richard A. Young, of MIT's Whitehead Institute, is a pioneer in gene transcription, the process by which cells read and interpret the genetic instructions embedded in DNA. His lab's achievements include novel AIDS vaccine candidates and new approaches to drug-resistant tuberculosis. He has as his mission to attack the problem of global disease at the genetic level; he's hunting for specific proteins that can turn the genetic machinery of diseases on, or off. These "gene regulators" can be knocked out of whack by a virus like HIV or by a mutation that results in a disease like mature onset diabetes. Young's group has developed a DNA microarray technology that helps them link gene regulators to their corresponding genes. They've worked out the connections in yeast, and they're targeting the human genome next. Watch video lecture: Engineering a New Attack on Disease Ana Posada '07: improving the production of an HIV medication Ana, a recent alumna of MIT course 7, writes, "Other than getting people sick, bacteria have many useful applications such as biodegradable plastic production and bioremediation. My [UROP] project focused on the AIDS protease inhibitor Crixivan. The compound has 5 chiral centers and takes about 2 weeks to produce at only about a 50% yield. My research has centered on engineering a plasmid into Rhodococcus species that will allow the bacteria to produce a major intermediate of the drug. The benefits of using bacteria are that bacteria are stereospecific and that bacteria allow for easier scalability of a process." Basically, the drug Crixivan is used to combat HIV, but it is a very complicated compound that is extremely difficult to make. Instead of relying strictly on bench-top chemical reactions, the Sinskey Lab is using bacteria to perform a critical step in the production process. By inserting a plasmid, or small circular piece of DNA, into the bacteria, Ana is essentially training the bacteria to perform a specific task. Read more: from Melis's blog |
 Counting cells: A microfluidics device that captures immune cells spotted with the CD4 protein (pictured above) could help doctors monitor HIV/AIDS patients in poor countries. Credit: Dr. Tim Evans / Photo Researchers, Inc.
 Prof. Rick Young: engineering a new attack on disease
 Ana Posada '07: improving the production of HIV medication |
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