Give
MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering
MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Health and Medicine

Synthesis and Processing

Nanodiscs activated by an external magnetic field could provide a research tool for studying neural responses

Device Fabrication

A diagnostic device based on nuclear magnetic resonance that could be used to detect fatty liver disease

Soft Matter

Contracting fibers could be used as artificial muscles for prosthetic limbs or valves in medical devices

Nanodiscs activated by an external magnetic field could provide a research tool for studying neural responses

A diagnostic device based on nuclear magnetic resonance that could be used to detect fatty liver disease

Contracting fibers could be used as artificial muscles for prosthetic limbs or valves in medical devices

Pioneering Improvements in Health Outcomes

DMSE researchers are leading the field in applying materials science and engineering to the human body. They have built a diagnostic device that uses nuclear magnetic resonance to detect fatty liver disease. The tool helps doctors find the disease before it progresses to liver failure. Researchers have also developed artificial muscles that can stretch more than 1,000 percent of their size and could be used in lighter-weight prosthetic limbs. And they can induce mechanical stimulation of the body’s neural cells using an injection of tiny particles. That brings science a step closer to bioelectronic medicine, which can stimulate individual organs or parts of the body without drugs or electrodes.

A sensor developed in DMSE could help doctors detect liver damage before it progresses.

25
percentage of the US population with fatty liver disease

Materials and Methods for Medical Advancement

The inventiveness of DMSE researchers in health and science is limitless. One important class of materials they use is soft matter—polymers for fibers that deliver drugs to the brain, for example, or get molded into valves for medical devices. DMSE researchers use synthesis and processing techniques to create materials that can mimic the response of human tissue, diagnose disease, or help heal and repair an organ. And they build devices—sensors that can measure oxygen levels in diseased tissue or silicone tubes that can be implanted in the bladder and slowly release drugs to treat bladder disease.

Related Materials and Research Types

Research Types

Device Fabrication
Synthesis and Processing

Materials

Soft Matter

Related Faculty and Researchers

In vivo photopharmacology enabled by multifunctional fibers

Developed an approach to deliver light and drugs on demand through a fiber and applied it to control behavior in mice. The experiment paves the way for future clinical applications of photopharmacology, which involves photosensitive molecules that upon illumination bind to receptors to enhance or suppress the activity of certain cells.

To be applicable in vivo and eventually in clinic, photopharmacology needs minimally invasive hardware that can deliver light and drugs simultaneously to the target area. Such a device, especially one suitable for implantation deep in the body, has been lacking.

Targeting therapeutic drugs to a specific body tissue and activating it only as needed could eliminate unwanted side effects from medication taken orally or intravenously.

Excited state non-adiabatic dynamics of large photoswitchable molecules using a chemically transferable machine learning potential

We developed a machine learning approach that accelerates the process of identifying photoswitches, molecules that activate, or “turn on,” when exposed to light.

Photoswitches could be used to develop light-activated drugs, including ones that treat diabetes, cancer, and nervous system disorders. But the current method of identifying functional photoswitches is difficult and costly.

The results pave the way for fast and accurate identification of photoswitchable molecules for light-activated drugs.