Convergence Science Transforming Biomedicine, MIT Report says

We thought our readers would like to know about “Convergence and the Future of Health,” a report released today by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Slightly self-serving full disclosure: New Cambridge Observer‘s Anita Harris was one of the writers).

MIT Graphic, Convergence Report 2016

CAMBRIDGE, MA — What if lost limbs could be regrown? Cancers detected early with blood or urine tests, instead of invasive biopsies? Drugs delivered via nanoparticles to specific tissues or even cells, minimizing unwanted side effects? While such breakthroughs may sound futuristic, scientists are already exploring these and other promising techniques.

But the realization of these transformative advances is not guaranteed. The key to bringing them to fruition, a landmark new report argues, will be strategic and sustained support for “convergence”: the merging of approaches and insights from historically distinct disciplines such as engineering, physics, computer science, chemistry, mathematics, and the life sciences.

The report, “Convergence: The Future of Health,” was co-chaired by Tyler Jacks, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology and director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; Susan Hockfield, noted neuroscientist and president emerita of MIT; and Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor at MIT and Nobel laureate, and will be presented at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington on June 24.

The report, available at http://www.convergencerevolution.net/2016-report draws on insights from several dozen expert participants at two workshops, as well as input from scientists and researchers across academia, industry, and government. Their efforts have produced a wide range of recommendations for advancing convergence research, but the report emphasizes one critical barrier above all: the shortage of federal funding for convergence fields.

“Convergence science has advanced across many fronts, from nanotechnology to regenerative tissue,” says Sharp. “Although the promise has been recognized, the funding allocated for convergence research in biomedical science is small and needs to be expanded. In fact, there is no federal agency with the responsibility to fund convergence in biomedical research.”

National Insitutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) are the primary source of research funding for biomedical science in the United States. In 2015, only 3 percent of all principal investigators funded by NIH were from departments of engineering, bioengineering, physics, biophysics, or mathematics. Accordingly, the report’s authors call for increasing NIH funding for convergence research to at least 20 percent of the agency’s budget.

Progress and potential

In 2011, MIT released a white paper that outlined the concept of convergence. More than just interdisciplinary research, convergence entails the active integration of these diverse modes of inquiry into a unified pursuit of advances that will transform health and other sectors, from agriculture to energy.

The new report lays out a more comprehensive vision of what convergence-based research could achieve, as well as the concrete steps required to enable these advances.

“The 2011 report argued that convergence was the next revolution in health research, following molecular biology and genomics,” says Jacks. “That report helped identify the importance and growing centrality of convergence for health research. This report is different. It starts us off on a true strategy for convergence-based research in health.”

The report released today makes clear that, despite such obstacles, this “third revolution” is already well underway. Convergence-based research has become standard practice at MIT, most notably at the Koch Institute and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

“About a third of all MIT engineers are involved in some aspect of convergence,” says Sharp. “These faculty are having an enormous impact on biomedical science and this will only grow in the future. Other universities are beginning to evolve along similar paths.”

Indeed, convergence-based approaches are becoming more common at many other pioneering university programs, including the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and the University of Chicago’s new Institute for Molecular Engineering, among others.

The report also points to several new federal initiatives that are harnessing the convergence research model to solve some of society’s most pressing health challenges.

For example, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, launched by the Obama administration in 2013, seeks to improve our understanding of how individual cells and neural circuits interact, in order to develop new ways to treat and prevent brain disorders. And the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, launched earlier this year to accelerate research to develop cancer vaccines and early detection methods and genomic tumor analysis, will also operate largely using convergence tools and approaches.

But the integration of new technologies and methods from genomics, information science, nanotechnology, and molecular biology could take us even farther.

The report outlines three major disease areas — brain disorders, infectious diseases and immunology, and cancer — and promising convergence-based approaches to tackling them. It also presents case studies of four emerging technology categories: advanced imaging in the body, nanotechnology for drug and therapy delivery, regenerative engineering, and big data and health information technology.

A sampling gives a sense of their transformative potential. Convergence techniques could enable rewiring the genes of mosquitoes to eliminate Zika, dengue, and malaria. They could help solve the emerging threat of drug-resistant bacterial strains, which infect over two million people in the U.S. every year. Convergence-based immunotherapy could activate a person’s immune system to fight cancer, reprogramming a person’s T-cells or antibodies to find and attack tumor cells. Big-data techniques could be used to generate and analyze huge amounts of data on people’s exposures to industrial chemicals, environmental toxins, and infectious agents, creating a new field of “chemistry of nurture,” to complement the “chemistry of nature” developed by the documentation of the human genome.

“Convergence might come just in time,” says Hockfield, “given our rapidly aging population, increasing levels of chronic disease, and mounting healthcare costs due to demographic trends throughout the developed world. But we must overcome significant barriers to get to convergence.”

Cultivating convergence

Realizing the full potential of the convergence revolution will require much more ambitious and strategic coordination and collaboration across industry, government, and academia, the report argues.

The report accordingly calls for a concerted joint effort by federal agencies, universities, and industry to develop a new strategic roadmap to support convergence-based research. As a concrete next step, the report’s authors recommend establishing an interagency working group on convergence with participation from NIH, the National Science Foundation, and other federal agencies involved in funding scientific research, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Energy.

Other pressing challenges include grant review processes based on narrow, outdated disciplinary structures, which limit the availability of resources for cross-functional research teams. The report also proposes new practices to foster “cultures of convergence” within academic institutions: cross-department hiring and tenure review, convergence “cluster hiring” and career grants, and new PhD programs wherein students design their own degree programs across disciplinary boundaries.

If the potential of convergence is great, so are the stakes.

“Convergence has grown from a little seedling to a sprouting plant, but to become a great tree and orchard yielding fruit for decades into the future, it needs to be nourished, expanded, and cultivated now,” says Sharp. “Students need to be educated, collaborations need to be encouraged, and resources need to be committed to make sure convergence thrives.”

“This integration is important to deal with the great challenges of the future: continued growth in the accessibility and quality of healthcare, growth of the economy, and providing resources for future populations.”

Funding for the report was provided by the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation, The Kavli Foundation, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

The report is available at http://www.convergencerevolution.net/2016-report

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Written by Jonathan Mingle, MIT News correspondent

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a Cambridge, MA, PR & marketing firm specializing in health, science and technology.

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An Open Secret—the movie you’ll probably never get to see

An Open Secret

The documentary movie “An Open Secret” does a wonderful job of exposing the sexual abuse of children in Hollywood. But you’ll probably never see it– not because of the difficult subject matter, but because almost no commercial theaters are willing to screen the film.

Written by Amy Berg, Lorien Hayes and Billy McMillin and directed by Berg, the 2014 film shows that abuse of child actors is pervasive in Hollywood and that most people in the industry know about it. Either they’ve been personally touched by it (pun intended) or know someone who has been. Many powerful people in Hollywood who could ruin the careers of anyone who pushes for justice on this issue are involved.

I applaud the subjects who were willing to share their painful stories and especially the teenager who actually went to court against his agent/abuser. The abuser got only six months in jail and is still in the industry despite solid proof of the exploitation.

Questions:
It’s a big story, so why isn’t anyone willing to distribute the film? Why has it been pulled from film festivals? Why after seeing the film have network executives refused to have the film on their networks? Why did the Screen Actor’s Guild unsuccessfully sue the filmmakers after seeing the film in which the head of their Young Performers Committee was implicated in the scandal?

Answer:

The topic is too hot to handle and hits too close to home.

Who can speak out for the innocent victims? In “Spotlight”, Hollywood is happy to pay homage to the reporters who uncovered sex abuse in the Catholic Church a number of years ago, but unwilling to acknowledge it in their midst.

In the past, I’ve attributed problems of child actors to their inability to handle fame and fortune and an acquired sense of entitlement. Now I wonder whether their spiraling out of control has far more nefarious roots.

I thank the Boston Globe for sponsoring the screening of this movie in its documentary series along with a Q&A session with the producer. I wish that others had the courage to take on this difficult topic and not bow to the powerful perpetrators, but who’s to take up the mantle? Newspapers are too financially strapped to take on such financially powerful interests so others such as documentary filmmakers or even comedians (like those who exposed Bill Cosby) need to raise our awareness and lead us to take action.

See the movie if you can and be outraged by the subject matter (child sexual abuse) and by the story behind the story (the unwillingness to deal with the “open secret”).

–-Sheila Green

Initial release: November 14, 2014

Director: Amy J. Berg

Cast: Evan Henzi, Michael Egan III, Joey Coleman, Nick Stojanovich,Mark Ryan, Michael Harrah, John Connolly

Screenplay: Amy J. Berg, Lorien Haynes, Billy McMillin

Music composed by: Johnny McDaid, Gary Lightbody

Producers: Amy J. Berg, Katelyn Howes, Matthew Valentinas ,

Co-Producers: Peter Clune, Alex Riguero

Executive Producer/Producer Gabe Hoffmann Matthew Valentinas

Italian Life Science Innovators to present at Venture Cafe, Cambridge, Oct. 22

Our friend Christa Bleyeben of Mass Global Partners and the Italian Trade Agency cordially invite New Cambridge Observer readers and others to “Discover 13 of Italy’s most Innovative early stage life science companies developing therapeutics, devices and tools.”

Registration and Networking: 3:00 PM

Company pitches: 3:30-5:00 PM

Networking at Venture Cafe: Italian Life Science Night: 5:00-7:00 PM

Participating Italian Companies

Abiel – recombinant collagenases for use in regenerative medicine research and cell therapy
Cell Dynamics – real time visualization of cells in culture
egoHealth – wearable sterilization device ffor stethescopes
Grademi – device to diagnose specific diseases using erythrocyte sedimentation rate
GreenBone – biomemtic (resorbable) implants, initially for non-union fractures
I-Delivery – nanocarrier to deliver drugs and cosmeticals to the hair root to treat acne and hair loss
Immagina Biotechnology – high throughput tools for isolation and analysis of polyribosomes
Universita degli studi di Udine – Research university exploring technology transfer opportunities
Xenus – topically delivered therapeutic for erectile dysfunction

If you are interested in connecting with any of the companies, please contact the meeting organizer at: robertmg52@gmail.com.

Have questions about Italian Trade Agency Early Stage Life Science Showcase?

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning pr and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA

Cambridge’s Rachel Yurman: See Marville Exhibit at Met before it’s gone!

Spending a day out of Cambridge? If you wish you were in Paris but can only make it to New York -– take your dreams to the Met and see “Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris” and “Paris as Muse: Photography 1840s-1930s,” (both through May 4) and “The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux” (through May 26)

[Rue de Constantine] Charles Marville (French, Paris 1813–1879 Paris) Date: ca. 1865 Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative Dimensions: 27.3 x 36.8 cm (10 3/4 x 14 1/2 in.) Classification: Photographs Credit Line Permission Requested: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986 Accession Number: 1986.1141 )

CHARLES MARVILLE AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Fifth Avenue at East 79^th Street

“ A bittersweet meditation on the meaning of nostalgia and the evolution of urban centers”

The Met’s current exhibit of Paris street scenes by 19^th-century French photographer Charles Marville is a revelation of memory and awareness that rebuffs the notion of nostalgia.

Marville (1813-1879), the son of modest tradespeople, used various techniques to document the destruction and re-creation of Paris from the early 1850’s through the 1870’s. From 1862 on, he was the official photographer of the city of Paris.

The neighborhoods and buildings Marville captured in these wondrous and sad images are long gone, having made way for the Paris of Napoleon III and his chief architect and planner, Baron Georges-Eugène Hausmann.The gilded, historic Paris that many of us know — the Belle Epoque city of grand boulevards and the Palais Garnier — was born in Marville’s time. Preservationism was evolving, as well, through the necessary process of repairing and cleaning such monuments as the great cathedral of Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris, and the Sainte-Chapelle.

The impulse to capture the past while obliterating it from sight is the beating heart of these photographs, which preserve the gritty city of Murger’s Scènes de la Vie de Bohème and Hugo’s Les Misérables .In Marville’s photos, the outskirts of this Paris still look rural, even desolate. Most of its streets appear to be empty, in part because images were taken very early in the day, but also because Marville’s exposures weren’t long enough to capture pedestrians and carriages in motion. The rare figures here and there were actually posed within the frame by the artist.The “Hausmannization” of Paris, a cramped, crowded, and less romantic city than the one we imagine, began in the 1850’s under Emperor Napoleon III. In addition to clearing medieval slums, upgrading sanitation, building parks, and restoring public monuments, the creation of boulevards and wider streets was intended to thwart those who might build and mount barricades, as they had in the uprisings of 1830 and 1848.Marville recorded everything. The old buildings, covered with advertising and all kinds of affiches touting such modern conveniences as the folding umbrella. The glass-covered, shop-lined alleys called passages, soon to be overshadowed by the department stores, les grand magasins. The old industrial areas that dumped waste into the Seine tributaries and canals. The timeless stares of tannery workers.The emerging wonders of the city are displayed here, too. Hausmann’s “street furniture,” advertising kiosks, gas lamps, and – mais oui – public urinals, are respectfully and meticulously documented by Marville’s camera. Most remarkable, perhaps, are the photographer’s views of the Avenue de l’Opéra as it was being built in the 1870’s. Leading to the new Opéra, now called the Palais Garnier, the neighborhood is shown post-demolition and pre-construction, looking like nothing so much as a war zone.One of the final ironies is learning that Marville himself was a victim of Hausmann’s grand plan. The photographer’s own studios were demolished and, during the 1871 uprising afterthe Franco-Prussian War, the Hôtel de Ville came under attack and much of its archival material – including Marville’s work as official photographer — was destroyed.

The exhibition is a bittersweet meditation on the meaning of nostalgia and the evolution of urban centers, whose periodic re-invention is both necessary and heartless. Nostalgia is a construct; there are many pasts beyond the ones we recall and imagine. The home that you long for may be just one of a cascade of images, seen for an instant in a series of receding mirrors.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.

Two Cambridge Nonprofits Win $$$ in 2012 Boston Foundation Challenge

Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) and Breakthrough Greater Boston (BTGB) , both based in Cambridge, have together raised more than $50,000 for vital summer youth programs, according to a recent communique from BTGB.

Sponsored by The Boston Foundation, the Giving Common Challenge was a 36-hour online event running from 8:00 a.m. on October 10 through 8:00 p.m. on October 11, 2012. More than 500 Massachusetts nonprofits competed for donations and more than $100,000 in time-based and grand prizes based on both the number and amount of unique gifts were given out. Both PBHA and Breakthrough took home major prizes.

Cambridge’s PBHA won the “most unique donors” grand prize of $25,000, with 379 supporters contributing $17,102 to the organization. PBHA also won one of the $2,000 “happy hour” prizes, awarded to the first 10 nonprofits to receive 50 unique gifts between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. on October 10. Combining the amount raised from donors with the two prizes, PBHA raised a total of $44,102.

Breakthrough Greater Boston, also based in Cambridge, finished in 9th place in unique donors, after rising as high as 4th. With its 137 gifts, as well as a $2,000 “lunch time” prize similar to PBHA’s “happy hour” prize, Breakthrough Greater Boston netted close to $15,000.

The funds raised by PBHA will support more than 80 community-service programs led by 1,600 college students in the areas of adult services; advocacy, organizing, housing, and health; after-school and in-school; mentoring; and summer.

PBHA executive director Maria Dominguez Gray noted, “The breadth and support of the individual donors, from former teen participants to volunteer alumni, was overwhelming. The additional funding we were able to raise through this important community effort is especially important in light of recent government cuts to high-impact services, including PBHA’s Harvard Square and St. James homeless shelters as well as the Summer Urban Program.” PBHA’s student president Carolyn Chou confirmed, “This money will allow us not only to continue providing quality services but imagine an exciting future for PBHA. The dedication and support of our donors is a testament to the work we do, and it will allow us to keep going despite a tough financial environment for nonprofits.”

The impact on Breakthrough Greater Boston’s out-of-school time and teacher training programming will be equally great, according to Breakthrough’s executive director, Elissa Spelman.

“As we continue to work on bridging the education gap in Greater Boston, we rely on the generosity of our supporters. Placing 9th in the Giving Common Challenge is not only an honor for our organization but a testament to the dedication of the broader Breakthrough community that made our success over the past 36 hours possible,” she said. “Breakthrough Greater Boston is in the midst of an exciting expansion from Cambridge into Boston, so the awareness and visibility of our organization within Boston’s philanthropic community couldn’t come at a better time. We extend our sincerest gratitude to all who supported us.”

According to the BGTB communique: For more than a century PBHA programs have provided vital experiences for generations of leaders in service and activism while developing real, meaningful community partnerships. PBHA strives to create change on multiple levels in Boston and Cambridge. For 20 years BTGB has been working to transform urban education for students and teachers.. Through six years of intensive, tuition-free, out of school time programming, Breakthrough changes students’ academic trajectories and supports them along the path to four-year college. Simultaneously, BTGB builds the next generation of teachers through competitive recruitment, research-based training, and coaching from master teachers.

–Posted by Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and online marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

A Look Back at New Cambridge Observer for 2010.

January 2, 2011

Here’s a summary, compiled by the stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com, who mulled over how this blog did in 2010. Five thousand views… Thanks, wordpress, readers, and the Boston Globe! I promise to be more diligent in 2011.

Here’s a high level summary-followed by a rundown by individual blog. Anita

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,700times in 2010. That’s about 11 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 6 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 57 posts. There were 40pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 6th with 203 views. The most popular post that day was Eeek! May I borrow your cat? Mice. Please advise. .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were digg.com, healthfitnesstherapy.com,dating-online2u.blogspot.com, slashingtongue.com, and the-best-twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for new cambridge observer, cambridge observer, unusual playground, cambridge common playground, andfruits and vegetables.