Douglas Lauffenburger, Ph.D.

MIT engineers’ new model could help researchers glean insights from genomic data and other huge datasets.

Over the past two decades, new technologies have helped scientists generate a vast amount of biological data. Large-scale experiments in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and cytometry can produce enormous quantities of data from a given cellular or multicellular system.

However, making sense of this information is not always easy. This is especially true when trying to analyze complex systems such as the cascade of interactions that occur when the immune system encounters a foreign pathogen… Continue reading.

The tumor microenvironment, which includes epithelial, immune and connective tissue cells, plays important roles in the pathogenesis of colorectal tumors.

Few studies have examined how the microenvironment changes as colorectal tumors transition from advanced adenomas to pre-invasive carcinomas. Ken Lau, PhD, and colleagues have now used single-cell RNA-sequencing, multiplex immunofluorescence imaging, and computational approaches to explore the colonic tumor microenvironment in mouse models of advanced adenoma (APC) and pre-invasive inflammation-induced cancer (AOM/DSS)… Continue reading.

Professors awarded the National Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has announced that two MIT professors have been jointly awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, the most prestigious engineering education award in the United States.

Linda G. Griffith, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in the Department of Biological Engineering, and Douglas A. Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Biology, were recognized for their respective contributions to “the establishment of a new biology-based engineering education, producing a new generation of leaders capable of addressing world problems with innovative biological technologies,” according to an NAE statement… Continue reading.

Over the years Linda Griffith has undergone many surgeries for endometriosis, a condition in which tissue that normally grows in the uterus is found elsewhere in the body and can cause lesions, inflammation, and infertility. The disease is poorly understood, and so it made sense to Griffith, a professor of biological and mechanical engineering, to start researching it. In a paper published earlier this month, Griffith and colleagues, including bioengineering professor Douglas Lauffenburger, studied pelvic fluid from women with endometriosis and in about a third they found elevated levels of a group of immune system proteins. The work is an early step towards classifying the disease and, eventually, finding new treatments for it. “We’re not claiming we found a mechanism — the mechanism for endometriosis,” Griffith told the Boston Globe. “We have found a very convincing approach to understand an immune network.”