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The Scientist Behind Moderna on How Engineering Revolutionizes Medicine

What does it take to turn bold ideas into life-saving medicine?

In this episode of The Big Question, we sit down with @MIT’s Dr. Robert Langer, one of the founding figures of bioengineering and among the most cited scientists in the world, to explore how engineering has reshaped modern healthcare. From early failures and rejected grants to breakthroughs that changed medicine, Langer reflects on a career built around persistence and problem-solving. His work helped lay the foundation for technologies that deliver large biological molecules, like proteins and RNA, into the body, a challenge once thought impossible. Those advances now underpin everything from targeted cancer therapies to the mRNA vaccines that transformed the COVID-19 response.

The conversation looks forward as well as back, diving into the future of medicine through engineered solutions such as artificial skin for burn victims, FDA-approved synthetic blood vessels, and organs-on-chips that mimic human biology to speed up drug testing while reducing reliance on animal models. Langer explains how nanoparticles safely carry genetic instructions into cells, how mRNA vaccines train the immune system without altering DNA, and why engineering delivery, getting the right treatment to the right place in the body, remains one of medicine’s biggest challenges. From personalized cancer vaccines to tissue engineering and rapid drug development, this episode reveals how science, persistence, and engineering come together to push the boundaries of what medicine can do next.

#Science #Medicine #Biotech #Health #LifeSciences.

Chapters:
00:00 Engineering the Future of Medicine.
01:55 Failure, Persistence, and Scientific Breakthroughs.
05:30 From Chemical Engineering to Patient Care.
08:40 Solving the Drug Delivery Problem.
11:20 Delivering Proteins, RNA, and DNA
14:10 The Origins of mRNA Technology.
17:30 How mRNA Vaccines Work.
20:40 Speed and Scale in Vaccine Development.
23:30 What mRNA Makes Possible Next.
26:10 Trust, Misinformation, and Vaccine Science.
28:50 Engineering Tissues and Organs.
31:20 Artificial Skin and Synthetic Blood Vessels.
33:40 Organs on Chips and Drug Testing.
36:10 Why Science Always Moves Forward.

The Big Question with the Museum of Science:

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4D-printed vascular stent deploys at body temperature, eliminating external heating

Next-generation vascular stents can make cardiovascular therapies minimally invasive and vascular treatments safe and less burdensome. In a new advancement, researchers from Japan and China have successfully proposed a novel adaptive 4D-printed vascular stent based on shape-memory polymer composite. The stent exhibits mechanical flexibility, radial strength, biomechanical compliance, and cytocompatibility in in vitro and in vivo experiments, making them promising for future clinical applications.

Cardiovascular diseases constitute a major global health concern. Various complications that affect normal blood flow in arteries and veins, such as stroke, blood clot formation in veins, blood vessel rupture, and coronary artery disease, often require vascular treatments. However, existing vascular stent devices often require complex, invasive deployment procedures, making it necessary to explore novel materials and manufacturing technologies that could enable such medical devices to work more naturally with the human body.

Moreover, the development of patient-specific, adaptively deployable vascular stents is crucial to further advance minimally invasive cardiovascular therapies and make vascular treatments safe and less burdensome for both patients and health care providers.

It’s time to think about human reproduction in space, scientists urge

There are currently no widely accepted, industry-wide standards for managing reproductive health risks in space, the study notes. The researchers highlight unresolved questions around preventing inadvertent early pregnancy during missions, understanding the fertility impacts of microgravity and radiation, and setting ethical boundaries for any future reproduction-related research beyond Earth.

“If reproduction is ever to occur beyond Earth,” the study notes, “it must do so with a clear commitment to safety, transparency and ethical integrity.”

This research is described in a paper published Feb. 3 in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online.

A Virus Designed in the Lab Could Help Defeat Antibiotic Resistance

Scientists can now design bacteria-killing viruses from DNA, opening a faster path to fighting superbugs.

Bacteriophages have been used as treatments for bacterial infections for more than a century. Interest in these viruses is rising again as antibiotic-resistant infections become an increasing threat to public health. Even so, progress in the field has been slow. Most research has relied on naturally occurring phages because traditional engineering methods are time consuming and difficult, limiting the development of customized therapeutic viruses.

A fully synthetic phage engineering breakthrough.

A simple blood test could change how Alzheimer’s is diagnosed

A blood test, combined with an ultrathin material derived from graphite, could significantly advance efforts to detect Alzheimer’s disease at its very earliest stage, even before symptoms appear.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. For millions of Europeans—and the health services that care for them—it is a ticking time bomb, with still no cure. But EU researchers are developing a simple tool to enable much earlier detection, potentially decades before symptoms appear.

Early detection matters because treatment is most effective when started as soon as possible. This gives people a better chance to slow the progression of the disease and plan for the future. Today, around 7 million people in Europe live with Alzheimer’s, a number expected to double by 2030, according to the European Brain Council.

Reproduction in space, an environment hostile to human biology

As commercial spaceflight draws ever closer and time spent in space continues to extend, the question of reproductive health beyond the bounds of planet Earth is no longer theoretical but now “urgently practical,” according to a new study published in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online.

“More than 50 years ago,” explains clinical embryologist Giles Palmer from the International IVF Initiative Inc, “two scientific breakthroughs reshaped what was thought biologically and physically possible—the first moon landing and the first proof of human fertilization in vitro.

Now, more than half a century later, we argue in this report that these once-separate revolutions are colliding in a practical and underexplored reality: space is becoming a workplace and a destination, while assisted reproductive technologies have become highly advanced, increasingly automated and widely accessible.

A programmable, Lego-like material for robots emulates life’s flexibility

Mechanical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a proof-of-concept method for programming mechanical properties into solid Lego-like building blocks. By controlling the solidity of hundreds of individual cells in specific patterns, the approach could allow futuristic robotics to alter their mechanical properties and functionalities on the fly.

In their initial tests, the researchers showed how a tail-like 3D beam with various configurations can move a robotic fish through water along different paths with the same motor activity. The team envisions miniaturized versions of the technology that could, for example, maneuver through blood vessels to survey their health or even reconfigure to form an adaptive stent.

The research appears in the journal Science Advances.

Enzyme required for transition from monocyte to tissue-resident macrophage identified!

A new study found that an enzyme involved in protein translation is essential for circulating immune cells, called monocytes, to mature into tissue-resident macrophages, a specialized population of immune cells that maintain organ health by clearing dead cells and debris. Without this enzyme, monocytes enter tissues but fail to fully differentiate, leading to impaired tissue maintenance and persistent immune cell infiltration that causes inflammation instead of repair.

The research, published in Nature, showed that deoxyhypusine synthase (DHPS) is required for both the differentiation and long-term survival of macrophages across multiple organs, including the lung, liver, brain, kidney, heart and peritoneal cavity.

Using a series of mouse models, the investigators demonstrated that DHPS controls a core, tissue-agnostic program that enables macrophages to adhere to their local environment, interact with surrounding cells and carry out the essential functions that maintain tissue balance and organ health.

The researchers traced these defects to the polyamine–hypusine pathway. Analyses of gene activity, protein production and protein-making machinery revealed that DHPS is required for efficient translation of a subset of genes involved in cell adhesion (the ability to stick to their surroundings and to other cells so they can stay in the correct place and function properly), signaling, and tissue interaction. Without DHPS, macrophages failed to express key proteins needed to anchor themselves within tissues and respond appropriately to local cues.

Imaging studies showed that DHPS-deficient macrophages had abnormal shape and positioning within tissues, while functional assays demonstrated defects in the clearance of dead cells and tissue maintenance. In the lung, this impairment led to accumulation of surfactant material, a substance in the lungs that keeps air sacs open, and immune cell infiltration, while in the liver, acute macrophage depletion followed by failed restoration resulted in vascular disruption and tissue damage. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission.

Study Reveals a Turning Point When Men’s Heart Attack Risk Accelerates

Screening at an earlier age can help identify risk factors sooner, enabling preventive strategies that reduce long-term risk.

Screening for heart attack risk should be happening earlier for men, according to a new study that found the risk of cardiovascular disease starts climbing when men are in their mid-30s – significantly earlier than a similar trend is seen in women.

The US-based researchers behind the study followed the health of 5,112 people for an average of around 34 years. As the participants were healthy and aged 18–30 when the study started in the mid-1980s, the researchers could chart cases of cardiovascular disease (including strokes and heart failure) over time.

According to the data, 35 is the critical age when disparities between male and female cardiovascular disease risk start to appear. Most of the difference is driven by coronary heart disease (CHD), the most common cause of heart attacks, where fatty deposits clog up arteries, blocking blood flow.

Newly identified RNA molecule may drive cancer patient survival

In a recent study, researchers at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center (Texas A&M Health) identify a novel RNA molecule that plays a crucial role in preserving the integrity of a key cellular structure, the nucleolus. Their findings also suggest this molecule may influence patient survival in certain blood cancers. The work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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