Health

The future of fertility, from artificial wombs to AI-assisted IVF

A look back at the history of infertility treatments and ahead to the tech that could change everything we thought we knew about reproduction.

Kristin Houser

Overlay of hands and abstract patterns in purple and blue tones, symbolizing hope for Parkinson's cure.

Drugs

The exciting research that may cure Parkinson’s

GeneCode is developing a drug it hopes won’t just alleviate Parkinson’s symptoms but also protect and restore patient’s neural health.

Kevin Dickinson

A child sitting on a couch in a dimly lit room, holding and looking intently at a tablet, as if testing the Goldilocks hypothesis for the perfect screen brightness.

Mental Health

Beyond screen time: Rethinking kids’ tech use with the “Goldilocks hypothesis”

The “Goldilocks hypothesis” asks parents to think beyond screen time and consider the habits that teens build around technology use.

Kevin Dickinson

Medicine

A common arthritis drug treats alopecia (Updated)

A common arthritis drug may be an effective alopecia treatment, based on a trial in which it helped people regrow their hair in just 36 weeks.

Kristin Houser

Surgery

Rare double lung transplant saves cancer patient’s life

A Chicago lung cancer patient’s successful double lung transplant is a ray of hope for others with the deadly disease.

B. David Zarley

Coronavirus

New UV light safely kills 98% of airborne pathogens indoors

Far-UVC light — a type of ultraviolet light that isn’t harmful to human health — killed 98% of airborne microbes indoors in a new study.

Kristin Houser

Neuroscience

Death: how long are we conscious for and does life really flash before our eyes?

Seeing one’s life flashing before one’s eye might be our ultimate attempt – however desperate – to find meaning in our lives.

Guillaume Thierry

Food

Purple tomatoes could soon hit store shelves

Purple tomatoes modified to be packed with antioxidants found in blueberries could soon be approved for sale by the FDA.

Kristin Houser

Medicine

Wounds of kids with “butterfly disease” healed by DNA gel

A topical gene therapy helped heal the wounds of people with “butterfly disease,” a painful disorder that makes the skin incredibly fragile.

Kristin Houser

Medicine

Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

MIT spinout Frequency Therapeutics’ drug candidate stimulates the growth of hair cells in the inner ear.

Zach Winn | MIT News Office

Medicine

Cancer is addicted to iron. It could be a fatal weakness.

By homing in on the high levels of iron in certain cancer cells, researchers have created a more targeted anticancer drug.

B. David Zarley

Inventions

High schoolers create $1 filter to remove lead in water

Maryland high schoolers have created a filter that removes lead in water. It costs just $1 and alerts users when it needs to be replaced.

Kristin Houser

Drugs

AI maps psychedelic “trip” experiences to regions of the brain – opening new route to psychiatric treatments

To better understand how these effects manifest in the brain, we analyzed over 6,000 written testimonials of hallucinogenic experiences.

Sam Friedman and Galen Ballentine

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