Category: Event Coverage

MIT Down syndrome researchers work on ways to ensure a healthy lifespan

An Alana Down Syndrome Center webinar, co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, presented numerous MIT studies that all share the goal of improving health throughout life for people with trisomy 21.

David Orenstein | The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
April 24, 2025

In recent decades the life expectancy of people with Down syndrome has surged past 60 years, so the focus of research at the Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT has been to make sure people can enjoy the best health during that increasing timeframe.

“A person with Down syndrome can live a long and happy life,” said Rosalind Mott Firenze, scientific director of the center founded at MIT in 2019 with a gift from the Alana Foundation. “So the question is now how do we improve health and maximize ability through the years? It’s no longer about lifespan, but about healthspan.”

Firenze and three of the center’s Alana Fellows scientists spoke during a webinar, hosted on April 17th, where they described the center’s work toward that goal. An audience of 99 people signed up to hear the webinar titled “Building a Better Tomorrow for Down Syndrome Through Research and Technology,” with many viewers hailing from the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, which co-sponsored the event.

The research they presented covered ways to potentially improve health from stages before birth to adulthood in areas such as brain function, heart development, and sleep quality.

Boosting brain waves

One of the center’s most important areas of research involves testing whether boosting the power of a particular frequency of brain activity—“gamma” brain waves of 40Hz—can improve brain development and function. The lab of the center’s Director Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, uses light that flickers and sound that clicks 40 times a second to increase that rhythm in the brain. In early studies of people with Alzheimer’s disease, which is a major health risk for people with Down syndrome, the non-invasive approach has proved safe, and appears to improve memory while preventing brain cells from dying. The reason it works appears to be because it promotes a healthy response among many types of brain cells.

Working with mice that genetically model Down syndrome, Alana Fellow Dong Shin Park has been using the sensory stimulation technology to study whether the healthy cellular response can affect brain development in a fetus while a mother is pregnant. In ongoing research, he said, he’s finding that exposing pregnant mice to the light and sound appears to improve fetal brain development and brain function in the pups after they are born.

In his research, Postdoctoral Associate Md. Rezaul Islam worked with 40Hz sensory stimulation and Down syndrome model mice at a much later stage in life—when they are adult aged. Together with former Tsai Lab member Brennan Jackson, he found that when the mice were exposed to the light and sound, their memory improved. The underlying reason seemed to be an increase not only in new connections among their brain cells, but also an increase in the generation of new ones. The research, currently online as a preprint, is set to publish in a peer-reviewed journal very soon.

Firenze said the Tsai lab has also begun to test the sensory stimulation in human adults with Down syndrome. In that testing, which is led by Dr. Diane Chan, it is proving safe and well tolerated, so the lab is hoping to do a year-long study with volunteers to see if the stimulation can delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Studying cells

Many Alana Center researchers are studying other aspects of the biology of cells in Down syndrome to improve healthspan. Leah Borden, an Alana Fellow in the lab of Biology Professor Laurie Boyer, is studying differences in heart development. Using advanced cultures of human heart tissues grown from trisomy 21 donors, she is finding that tissue tends to be stiffer than in cultures made from people without the third chromosome copy. The stiffness, she hypothesizes, might affect cellular function and migration during development, contributing to some of the heart defects that are common in the Down syndrome population.

Firenze pointed to several other advanced cell biology studies going on in the center. Researchers in the lab of Computer Science Professor Manolis Kellis, for instance, have used machine learning and single cell RNA sequencing to map the gene expression of more than 130,000 cells in the brains of people with or without Down syndrome to understand differences in their biology.

Researchers the lab of Y. Eva Tan Professor Edward Boyden, meanwhile, are using advanced tissue imaging techniques to look into the anatomy of cells in mice, Firenze said. They are finding differences in the structures of key organelles called mitochondria that provide cells with energy.

And in 2022, Firenze recalled, Tsai’s lab published a study showing that brain cells in Down syndrome mice exhibited a genome-wide disruption in how genes are expressed, leading them to take on a more senescent, or aged-like, state.

Striving for better sleep

One other theme of the Alana Center’s research that Firenze highlighted focuses on ways to understand and improve sleep for people with Down syndrome. In mouse studies in Tsai’s lab, they’ve begun to measure sleep differences between model and neurotypical mice to understand more about the nature of sleep disruptions.

“Sleep is different and we need to address this because it’s a key factor in your health,” Firenze said.

Firenze also highlighted how the Alana Center has collaborated with MIT’s Desphande Center for Technological Innovation to help advance a new device for treating sleep apnea in people with Down syndrome. Led by Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Ellen Roche, the ZzAlign device improves on current technology by creating a custom-fit oral prosthesis accompanied by just a small tube to provide the needed air pressure to stabilize mouth muscles and prevent obstruction of the airway.

Through many examples of research projects aimed at improving brain and heart health and enhancing sleep, the webinar presented how MIT’s Alana Down Syndrome Center is working to advance the healthspan of people with Down syndrome.

 

Picower Events: 2024 Kuggie Vallee Distinguished Lectures and Workshops

Mixing joy and resolve, event celebrates women in science and addresses persistent inequalities

David Orenstein | The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
October 2, 2024

The Kuggie Vallee Distinguished Lectures and Workshops presented inspiring examples of success, even as the event evoked frank discussions of the barriers that still hinder many women scientists. 

For two days at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, participants in the Kuggie Vallee Distinguished Lectures and Workshops celebrated the success of women in science and shared strategies to persist through, or better yet dissipate, the stiff headwinds women still face in the field.

“Everyone is here to celebrate and to inspire and advance the accomplishments of all women in science,” said host Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of The Picower Institute, as she welcomed an audience that included scores of students, postdocs and other research trainees. “It is a great feeling to have the opportunity to showcase examples of our successes and to help lift up the next generation.”

Tsai earned the honor of hosting the event after she was named a Vallee Visiting Professor in 2022 by the Vallee Foundation. Foundation President Peter Howley, a professor of pathological anatomy at Harvard, said the global series of lectureships and workshops were created to honor Kuggie Vallee, a former Lesley College Professor who worked to advance the careers of women.

During the program Sept. 24-25, speakers and audience members alike made it clear that helping women succeed requires both recognizing their achievements and resolving to change social structures in which they face marginalization.

Inspiring achievements

Lectures on the first day featured two brain scientists who have each led acclaimed discoveries that have been transforming their fields.

Michelle Monje, a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Stanford whose recognitions include a MacArthur Fellowship, described her lab’s studies of brain cancers in children, which emerge at specific times in development as young brains adapt to their world by wiring up new circuits and insulating neurons with a fatty sheathing called myelin. Monje has discovered that when the precursors to myelinating cells called oligodendrocyte precursor cells harbor cancerous mutations, the tumors that arise—called gliomas—can hijack those cellular and molecular mechanisms. To promote their own growth, gliomas tap directly into the electrical activity of neural circuits by forging functional neuron-to-cancer connections, akin to the “synapse” junctions healthy neurons make with each other. Years of her lab’s studies, often led by female trainees, have not only revealed this insidious behavior (and linked aberrant myelination to many other diseases as well), but also revealed specific molecular factors involved. Those findings, Monje said, present completely novel potential avenues for therapeutic intervention.

“This cancer is an electrically active tissue and that is not how we have been approaching understanding it,” she said.

Erin Schuman, who directs the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and has won honors including the Brain Prize, described her groundbreaking discoveries related to how neurons form and edit synapses along the very long branches—axons and dendrites—that give the cells their exotic shapes. Synapses form very far from the cell body where scientists had long thought all proteins, including those needed for synapse structure and activity, must be made. In the mid-1990s Schuman showed that the protein-making process can occur at the synapse and that neurons stage the needed infrastructure—mRNA and ribosomes—near those sites. Her lab has continued to develop innovative tools to build on that insight, cataloging the stunning array of thousands of mRNAs involved, including about 800 that are primarily translated at the synapse, studying the diversity of synapses that arise from that collection, and imaging individual ribosomes such that her lab can detect when they are actively making proteins in synaptic neighborhoods.

Persistent headwinds

While the first day’s lectures showcased examples of women’s success, the second day’s workshops turned the spotlight on the social and systemic hindrances that continue to make such achievements an uphill climb. Speakers and audience members engaged in frank dialogues aimed at calling out those barriers, overcoming them, and dismantling them.

Susan Silbey, Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology and Anthropology at MIT and Professor of Behavioral and Policy Sciences in the Sloan School of Management, told the group that as bad as sexual harassment and assault in the workplace are, the more pervasive, damaging and persistent headwinds for women across a variety of professions are “deeply sedimented cultural habits” that marginalize their expertise and contributions in workplaces, rendering them invisible to male counterparts, even when they are in powerful positions. High-ranking women in Silicon Valley who answered the “Elephant in the Valley” survey, for instance, reported high rates of many demeaning comments and demeanor,  as well as exclusion from social circles. Even Supreme Court justices are not immune, she noted, citing research showing that for decades female justices have been interrupted with disproportionate frequency during oral arguments at the court. Silbey’s research has shown that young women entering the engineering workforce often become discouraged by a system that appears meritocratic but in which they are often excluded from opportunities to demonstrate or be credited for that merit and are paid significantly less.

“Women’s occupational inequality is a consequence of being ignored, having contributions overlooked or appropriated, of being assigned to lower status roles, while men are pushed ahead, honored and celebrated, often on the basis of women’s work,” Silbey said.

Often relatively small in numbers, women in such workplaces become tokens—visible as different but still treated as outsiders, Silbey said. Women tend to internalize this status, becoming very cautious about their work while some men surge ahead in more cavalier fashion. Silbey and speakers who followed illustrated the effect this can have on women’s careers in science. Kara McKinley, an assistant professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard, noted that while the scientific career “pipeline” is some areas of science is full of female graduate students and postdocs, only about 20 percent of natural sciences faculty positions are held by women. Strikingly, women are already significantly depleted in the applicant pools for assistant professor positions, she said. Those who do apply tend to wait until they are more qualified than the men they are competing against. McKinley and Silbey each noted that women scientists submit fewer papers to prestigious journals, with Silbey explaining that it’s often because women are more likely to worry that their studies need to tie up every loose end. Yet, said Stacie Weninger, a venture capitalist and president of the F-Prime Biomedical Research Initiative and a former editor at Cell Press, women were also less likely than men to rebut rejections from journal editors, thereby accepting the rejection even though rebuttals sometimes work.

Several speakers including Weninger and Silbey said pedagogy must change to help women overcome a social tendency to couch their assertions in caveats when many men speak with confidence and are therefore perceived as more knowledgeable.

At lunch, trainees sat in small groups with the speakers. They shared sometimes harrowing personal stories of gender-related difficulties in their young careers and sought advice on how to persist and remain resilient. Schuman advised the trainees to report mistreatment, even if they aren’t confident that university officials will be able to effect change, at least to make sure patterns of mistreatment get on the record. Reflecting on discouraging comments she experienced early in her career, Monje advised students to build up and maintain an inner voice of confidence and draw upon it when criticism is unfair.

“It feels terrible in the moment, but cream rises,” Monje said. “Believe in yourself. It will be OK in the end.”

Lifting each other up

Speakers at the conference shared many ideas to help overcome inequalities. McKinley described a program she launched in 2020 to ensure that a diversity of well-qualified women and non-binary postdocs are recruited for and apply for life sciences faculty jobs: the Leading Edge Symposium. The program identifies and names fellows—200 so far—and provides career mentoring advice, a supportive community, and a platform to ensure they are visible to recruiters. Since the program began, 99 of the fellows have gone on to accept faculty positions at various institutions.

In a talk tracing the arc of her career, Weninger, who trained as a neuroscientist at Harvard, said she left bench work for a job as an editor because she wanted to enjoy the breadth of science, but also noted that her postdoc salary didn’t even cover the cost of child care. She left Cell Press in 2005 to help lead a task force on women in science that Harvard formed in the wake of comments by then-president Lawrence Summers widely understood as suggesting that women lacked “natural ability” in science and engineering. Working feverishly for months, the task force recommended steps to increase the number of senior women in science, including providing financial support for researchers who were also caregivers at home so they’d have the money to hire a technician. That extra set of hands would afford them the flexibility to keep research running even as they also attended to their families. Notably, Monje said she does this for the postdocs in her lab.

A graduate student asked Silbey at the end of her talk how to change a culture in which traditionally male-oriented norms marginalize women. Silbey said it starts with calling out those norms and recognizing that they are the issue, rather than increasing women’s representation in, or asking them to adapt to, existing systems.

“To make change it requires that you do recognize the differences of the experiences and not try to make women exactly like men or continue the past practices and think, ‘Oh, we just have to add women into it’,” she said.

Silbey also praised the Kuggie Vallee event at MIT for assembling a new community around these issues. Women in science need more social networks where they can exchange information and resources, she said.

“This is where an organ, an event like this, is an example of making just that kind of change: women making new networks for women,” she said.

Catalyst Symposium helps lower “activation barriers” for rising biology researchers

Second annual assembly, sponsored by the Department of Biology and Picower Institute, invited postdocs from across the country to meet with faculty, present their work to the MIT community, and build relationships.

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
June 10, 2024

For science — and the scientists who practice it — to succeed, research must be shared. That’s why members of the MIT community recently gathered to learn about the research of eight postdocs from across the country for the second annual Catalyst Symposium, an event co-sponsored by the Department of Biology and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

The eight Catalyst Fellows came to campus as part of an effort to increase engagement between MIT scholars and postdocs excelling in their respective fields from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in science. The three-day symposium included panel discussions with faculty and postdocs, one-on-one meetings, social events, and research talks from the Catalyst Fellows.

“I love the name of this symposium because we’re all, of course, eager to catalyze advancements in our professional lives, in science, and to move forward faster by lowering activation barriers,” says MIT biology department head Amy Keating. “I feel we can’t afford to do science with only part of the talent pool, and I don’t think people can do their best work when they are worried about whether they belong.”

The 2024 Catalyst Fellows include Chloé Baron from Boston Children’s Hospital; Maria Cecília Canesso from The Rockefeller University; Kiara Eldred from the University of Washington School of Medicine; Caitlin Kowalski from the University of Oregon; Fabián Morales-Polanco from Stanford University; Kali Pruss from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Rodrigo Romero from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; and Zuri Sullivan from Harvard University.

Romero, who received his PhD from MIT working in the Jacks Lab at the Koch Institute, said that it was “incredible to see so many familiar faces,” but he spent the symposium lunch chatting with new students in his old lab.

“Especially having been trained to think differently after MIT, I can now reach out to people that I didn’t as a graduate student, and make connections that I didn’t think about before,” Romero says.

He presented his work on lineage plasticity in the tumor microenvironment. Lineage plasticity is a hallmark of tumor progression but also occurs during normal development, such as wound healing.

As for the general mission of the symposium, Romero agrees with Keating.

“Trying to lower the boundary for other people to actually have a chance to do academic research in the future is important,” Romero says.

The Catalyst Symposium is aimed at early-career scientists who foresee a path in academia. Of the 2023 Catalyst Fellows, one has already secured a faculty position. Starting this September, Shan Maltzer will be an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Pharmacology and the Vanderbilt Brain Institute studying mechanisms of somatosensory circuit assembly, development, and function.

Another aim of the Catalyst Symposium is to facilitate collaborations and strengthen existing relationships. Sullivan, an immunologist and molecular neuroscientist who presented on the interactions between the immune system and the brain, is collaborating with Sebastian Lourido, an associate professor of biology and core member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Lourido’s studies include pathogens such as Toxoplasma gondii, which is known to alter the behavior of infected rodents. In the long term, Sullivan hopes to bridge research in immunology and neuroscience — for instance by investigating how infection affects behavior. She has observed that two rodents experiencing illness will huddle together in a cage, whereas an unafflicted rodent and an ill one will generally avoid each other when sharing the same space.

Pruss presented research on the interactions between the gut microbiome and the environment, and how they may affect physiology and fetal development. Kowalski discussed the relationship between fungi residing on our bodies and human health. Beyond the opportunity to deliver talks, both agreed that the small group settings of the three-day event were rewarding.

“The opportunity to meet with faculty throughout the symposium has been invaluable, both for finding familiar faces and for establishing friendly relationships,” Pruss says. “You don’t have to try to catch them when you’re running past them in the hallway.”

Eldred, who studies cell fate in the human retina, says she was excited about the faculty panels because they allowed her to ask faculty about fundamental aspects of recruiting for their labs, like bringing in graduate students.

Kowalski also says she enjoyed interfacing with so many new ideas — the spread of scientific topics from among the cohort of speakers extended beyond those she usually interacts with.

Mike Laub, professor of biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and Yadira Soto-Feliciano, assistant professor of biology and intramural faculty at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, were on the symposium’s planning committee, along with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer Hallie Dowling-Huppert. Laub hopes the symposium will continue to be offered annually; next year’s Catalyst Symposium is already scheduled to take place in early May.

“I thought this year’s Catalyst Symposium was another great success. The talks from the visiting fellows featured some amazing science from a wide range of fields,” Laub says. “I also think it’s fair to say that their interactions with the faculty, postdocs, and students here generated a lot of excitement and energy in our community, which is exactly what we hoped to accomplish with this symposium.”

2024 Catalyst Symposium

Lowering ‘activation barriers’ for rising biology researchers

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
May 16, 2024

The second annual Catalyst Symposium, sponsored by the Department of Biology and Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, invited postdocs from across the country to meet with faculty, present their work to the MIT community, and build relationships.

For science — and the scientists who practice it — to succeed, it must be shared. That’s why members of the MIT community recently gathered to learn about the research of eight postdocs from across the country for the second annual Catalyst Symposium, an event co-sponsored by the Department of Biology and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. 

The eight Catalyst Fellows came to campus as part of an effort to increase engagement between MIT scholars and postdocs excelling in their respective fields from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in science. The three-day symposium included panel discussions with faculty and postdocs, one-on-one meetings, social events, and research talks from the Catalyst Fellows.

“I love the name of this symposium because we’re all, of course, eager to catalyze advancements in our professional lives, in science, and to move forward faster by lowering activation barriers,” says MIT Biology Department Head Amy Keating. “I feel we can’t afford to do science with only part of the talent pool, and I don’t think people can do their best work when they are worried about whether they belong.”  

The cohort of 2024 Catalyst Fellows included: Chloé Baron from Boston Children’s Hospital; Maria Cecília Canesso from The Rockefeller University; Kiara Eldred from the University of Washington School of Medicine; Caitlin Kowalski from the University of Oregon; Fabián Morales-Polanco from Stanford University; Kali Pruss from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Rodrigo Romero from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; and Zuri Sullivan from Harvard University. 

Romero, who received his PhD from MIT working in the Jacks Lab at the Koch Institute, said that it was “incredible to see so many familiar faces,” but he spent the Symposium lunch chatting with new students in his old lab. 

“Especially having been trained to think differently after MIT, I can now reach out to people that I didn’t as a graduate student, and make connections that I didn’t think about before,” Romero says. 

He presented his work on lineage plasticity in the tumor microenvironment. Lineage plasticity is a hallmark of tumor progression but also occurs during normal development, such as wound healing.

As for the general mission of the symposium, Romero agreed with Keating. 

“Trying to lower the boundary for other people to actually have a chance to do academic research in the future is important,” Romero says.

The Catalyst Symposium is aimed at early-career scientists who foresee a path in academia. Of the 2023 Catalyst Fellows, one has already secured a faculty position. Starting in September 2024, Shan Maltzer will be an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Pharmacology and the Vanderbilt Brain Institute studying mechanisms of somatosensory circuit assembly, development, and function. 

Another aim of the Catalyst Symposium is to facilitate collaborations and strengthen existing relationships. Sullivan, an immunologist and molecular neuroscientist who presented on the interactions between the immune system and the brain, is collaborating with Sebastian Lourido, an Associate Professor of Biology and Core Member of the Whitehead Institute. Lourido’s studies include pathogens such as Toxoplasma gondii, which is known to alter the behavior of infected rodents. In the long term, Sullivan hopes to bridge research in immunology and neuroscience — for instance by investigating how infection affects behavior. She has observed that two rodents experiencing illness will huddle together in a cage, whereas an unafflicted rodent and an ill one will generally avoid each other when sharing the same space. 

Pruss presented research on the interactions between the gut microbiome and the environment, and how they may affect physiology and fetal development. Kowalski discussed the relationship between fungi residing on our bodies and human health. Beyond the opportunity to deliver talks, both agreed that the small group settings of the three-day event were rewarding.

“The opportunity to meet with faculty throughout the symposium has been invaluable, both for finding familiar faces and for establishing friendly relationships,” Pruss says. “You don’t have to try to catch them when you’re running past them in the hallway.”

Eldred, who studies cell fate in the human retina, says she was excited about the faculty panels because they allowed her to ask faculty about fundamental aspects of recruiting for their labs, like bringing in graduate students. 

Kowalski also says she enjoyed interfacing with so many new ideas — the spread of scientific topics from among the cohort of speakers extended beyond those she usually interacts with.

Mike Laub, Professor of Biology and HHMI Investigator, and Yadira Soto-Feliciano, Assistant Professor of Biology and Intramural Faculty at the Koch Institute, were on the symposium’s planning committee, along with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer Hallie Dowling-Huppert. Laub hopes the symposium will continue to be offered annually; next year’s Catalyst Symposium is already scheduled to take place in early May.

“I thought this year’s Catalyst Symposium was another great success. The talks from the visiting Fellows featured some amazing science from a wide range of fields,” Laub says. “I also think it’s fair to say that their interactions with the faculty, postdocs, and students here generated a lot of excitement and energy in our community, which is exactly what we hoped to accomplish with this symposium.”