MIT faculty tackle big ideas in a symposium kicking off Inauguration Day

Left to right: Anantha Chandrakasan, Cullen Buie, Andrew Lo, Anne White, Jinhua Zhao, Pablo Jarilllo-Herrero, Dina Katabi, Sangeeta Bhatia, Sally Kornbluth, Linda Henry. Image: Jake Belcher

(Jennifer Chu | MIT News) Sangeeta Bhatia, the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, emphasized the importance of “convergence” in cultivating new inventions. Her group combines the fields of nanotechnology and medicine to develop new therapies for patients with cancer by harnessing the unique properties of materials at the nanoscale.

“Just as these materials have unique physical properties at nanoscale, they also have unique biological properties,” Bhatia said. “How they traffic inside the body changes with their size. So, you can design materials that speak the language of biology.”

To her point, Bhatia’s group has recently developed an ultrasensitive sensor in the form of particles that are each 1/1,000 the width of a human hair and that can travel through a patient’s bloodstream and detect the presence of cancer. The particles are small enough to pass through the kidney and out of the body, making the sensor “completely noninvasive.”

The team set up a company, Glympse Bio, to advance the technology, and has explored a variety of methods to deliver the sensors, including as a urine test akin to a pregnancy test, and an oral test similar to a breathalyzer.

“Invention is an iterative process,” Bhatia said. “I imagine it’s like writing a song. You start in one direction and make it up as you go. Invention begets invention.” Read more…