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Engineering Cures
MIT student prize winner develops stroke and cancer treatments
By Lisa Scanlon

At 27, david Berry ’00 already has an impressive range of inventions to his credit: a novel protein for treating strokes, two new ways to attack cancer, and a method for enlisting bacteria to produce hydrogen. That’s why the MD/PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the Biological Engineering Division received this year’s Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, a $30,000 award given to an MIT senior or graduate student who demonstrates remarkable inventiveness.

Berry received the prize primarily for his stroke treatment, which grew out of his research on a complex sugar polymer called heparin and its interactions with a protein involved in forming blood vessels. Scientists had attempted to use the protein as a stroke treatment, but it failed in clinical trials because of serious side effects. So Berry and his colleagues engineered a similar protein that can be given in smaller doses but that still limits brain tissue damage from stroke. Unlike an existing drug that must be administered within three hours of a stroke, Berry’s protein may prevent brain damage if given within 24 hours, he believes. And even when administered later, the compound may still help speed patients’ recovery, Berry says. The protein is moving toward clinical trials.

Dean of engineering Thomas L. Magnanti points to Berry’s work as one of the “many enormously exciting” research projects at the Institute. He notes, however, that as the Council on Competitiveness—a forum of industrial, university, and labor leaders—stated in a recent report, the United States needs to do more to encourage students to become inventors. “This is what the Lemelson-MIT prize is about,” he says.