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Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang holding the medal she won in the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition

Rhoda Zhang Wins 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition

MIT News

November 5, 2024

Graduate student Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang has won the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition in both the Graduate and People's Choice categories. With advisors Robert Langer and Ana Jaklenec, Zhang and KI postdoc Xin Yang are developing metal-organic frameworks and other safe, sustainable nutrient stabilizing materials to address global micronutrient deficiencies. They are also launching MOFe™ Coffee, the first iron-fortified coffee.

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Learnt to a CRISPR

MIT News

May 12, 2021

Few discoveries have accelerated biomedical research faster than CRISPR, the protein-based gene editing tool that allows scientists to precisely manipulate individual genes on a molecular level. Startup company KSQ Therapeutics, co-founded by KI members Eric Lander, David Sabatini, and Jonathan Weissman, leverages the investigators' CRISPR-based technologies to decipher the role of genes in diseases like cancer and apply these insights to therapeutic development.

KI Physician Honored

MIT Koch Institute

May 12, 2021

Congratulations to Michael Yaffe, David H. Koch Professor of Science and director of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, on his election to the Association of American Physicians. The AAP is a selective honorary medical society for physicians with outstanding credentials in basic or translational biomedical research. Yaffe, in addition to conducting research into cancer’s dysregulated signaling pathways, is a trauma surgeon and intensivist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Over the summer, he served as co-director of the acute care and ICU section of the Boston Hope Covid-19 pop-up hospital.

Redefining Endometriosis

The New York Times

May 12, 2021

The New York Times profiled Linda Griffith's efforts to pivot the conversation around endometriosis from "a women's issue" to "an MIT issue." Founder of the first lab in the U.S. dedicated to endometriosis and a recently elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Griffith has developed uterine organoid models to parse the genetic and molecular networks at play in the poorly understood disease.

Location, Location, Location

Massachusetts General Hospital

April 14, 2021

Matthew Vander Heiden and Bridge Project collaborators demonstrate in a Nature Cancer paper that metabolic differences between primary and metastatic brain tumors may serve as therapeutic targets. The research team showed that breast cancer metastases in the brain require fatty acid synthase expression because they must make their own fats, as compared to breast cancer tumors in the breast, where fats are abundant and accessible. Therapies that inhibit fatty acid synthase in these brain metastases may be a promising strategy for combatting these fatal and drug resistant tumors. This work was also supported in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

In-eight Ability

Genes and Development

April 8, 2021

Paradoxically, variation in the number of chromosomes each cell carries impedes the ability of normal cells to grow and proliferate—but not for cancer cells. By combining bench experiments with bioinformatic algorithms developed in the Barbara K. Ostrom 1978 Bioinformatics and Computing facility, Amon Lab researchers demonstrate how an extra copy of chromosome 8 in Ewing’s sarcoma helps rather than hinders cell survival and growth. In the study published in Genes and Development, researchers found that the EWS-FLI1 fusion oncogene, which drives 85% of Ewing’s sarcomas, results in replication stress and increased DNA damage. An extra copy of chromosome 8 alleviated the cellular stress caused by the oncogene by adding additional copies of RAD21, a gene implicated in DNA damage repair. The team’s findings offer new insight into the mechanisms behind tumorigenesis.

Hail Fellows, Well Met

American Association for Cancer Research

April 5, 2021

Nancy Hopkins and Aviv Regev were elected to the 2021 class of American Association for Cancer Research Fellows. Hopkins was honored for helping to establish zebrafish as an essential disease model—which has also earned her the International Zebrafish Conference's 2021 George Streisinger Award—as well as her research involving murine RNA tumor viruses. Regev was honored for her work developing computational approaches to understanding molecular circuits and developing technologies for high throughput, single-cell screening.

Congratulations to our 2020 Karches Prize Winners

MIT Koch Institute

April 1, 2021

The KI is proud to congratulate 2020's Peter Karches Mentorship Prize winners: Suman Bose, Crystal Chu, Dan Schmidt, and Molly Wilson. Each year, the prize recognizes the critical role mentorship plays in engaging the next generation of cancer researchers.

Koch Institute Names New Director

MIT News

March 31, 2021

Matthew Vander Heiden has been named the next director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, effective April 1. An MIT professor of biology, a practicing oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a pioneer in the field of cancer cell metabolism, Vander Heiden was one of the first faculty members hired to join the Koch Institute after it was created. He has served as associate director since 2017, and is a member of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. His work has been recognized by many awards, including the HHMI Faculty Scholar Award and an NCI Outstanding Investigator Award. Now, as he guides the Koch Institute into its second decade, he looks forward to taking advantage of new opportunities to make fundamental discoveries in the biology of cancer, as well as translating existing knowledge into better treatments for patients. Vander Heiden succeeds Tyler Jacks, who has served as director for more than 19 years, first for the MIT Center for Cancer Research and then for its successor, the Koch Institute.

Some Self-Assembly Required

MIT News

March 25, 2021

A new screening platform combines machine learning with high-throughput experimentation to identify self-assembling nanoparticles for drug delivery. Nanoparticles, usually made from lipids, polymers or both, can improve a drug’s pharmacokinetics. However, nanoparticle production can be complex and their drug payload small. In a study published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from the Langer and Traverso Labs screened 2.1 million pairings of small molecule drugs and inactive drug ingredients, identifying 100 new nanoparticle formulations that are simple to create and shuttle larger drug cargoes. One of those nanoparticles, combining the cancer medicine sorafenib with glycyrrhizin (the primary flavoring of licorice), proved more effective than than sorafenib alone in both cell culture and a genetic mouse model of liver cancer.

Time to Face the Mucus

MIT News

March 19, 2021

Irvine Lab researchers are building an army of T cells ready to fight disease in the respiratory tract. The inhalable vaccines use the naturally occurring protein albumin to carry immune response-generating antigens into the mucosal lining of lungs and lymph nodes, where soldier T cells learn to recognize and fend off unwanted intruders. In a study published in Science Immunology and funded in part by the Bridge Project and the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine, researchers observed a 25-fold increase in T cell response over traditional muscular injections. Ultimately, the team aims to develop vaccines that protect against both viruses and cancer, and combat metastasis by priming the mucosal lining in key organs to reject invading cancer cells. The technology has been licensed by Elicio Therapeutics, which will begin clinical testing of an albumin-binding vaccine later this year.