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Luc7, the blue group of proteins, against a background of human cells.

Splice of life

MIT News

February 20, 2025

The Burge lab has discovered a new type of control over RNA splicing, a process critical for gene expression. Appearing in a new Nature Communications paper, their study sheds light on how this control mechanism can go wrong—and serve as a potential therapeutic target—in acute myelogenous leukemias and other diseases.

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Showing 41–50 of 613 stories

Matthew Vander Heiden elected to National Academy of Medicine
 

MIT News

October 22, 2024

Congratulations to Koch Institute Director Matthew Vander Heiden, for his election to the National Academy of Medicine! Professor Vander Heiden and his fellow 2024 inductees are being honored for their outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Recognized for his research on cancer metabolism, Vander Heiden—who is also a practicing oncologist—has uncovered critical insights into how cancer cells fuel their growth, leading to innovative therapies for cancer and other diseases. His work continues to shape cancer treatment strategies, making a profound impact on the future of medicine. This honor highlights his dedication to advancing health and science.

Under the radar

She Knows

October 14, 2024

While AI shows promise in breast cancer screening, studies reveal it falls short for Black women due to underrepresentation in training data. Without diverse datasets, AI struggles to detect malignancies accurately across racial groups. To improve health outcomes, data science researchers like Regina Barzilay are working to build more diverse datasets and develop approaches that ensure AI serves all racial and demographic groups equitably.

Compressed is more

Nature

October 10, 2024

The Shalek lab has been working to advance drug discovery and biological inquiry by using in vitro model systems that recapitulate disease biology with high fidelity. Because such systems often yield limited numbers of samples for analysis, the team has developed a compressed screening platform that pools tests of biochemical perturbations and then computationally deconvolutes results in the phenotypes of cells to reduce sample size, labor, and cost. 

Congratulations to alum Kaitlyn Sadtler!

Time Magazine

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to alum Kaitlyn Sadtler! She landed a spot on the TIME100 Next list, which recognizes emerging leaders from around the world who are shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership. Sadtler worked in the Langer and Anderson labs focusing on how the modulation of immune response influenced tissue development.
 

A new mechanism for an old drug

MIT News

October 7, 2024

Since the 1950s, the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) has been commonly used to treat many cancers with the understanding that it works by damaging DNA and inhibiting the synthesis of its building blocks. A new study from the Yaffe Lab shows instead that, when used clinically for colon and other gastrointestinal cancers, the drug actually kills tumor cells by interfering with RNA synthesis important for making new ribosomes.  The findings, published in Cell Reports Medicine, helps explain how treatments that combine 5-FU with DNA-damaging chemotherapies could be modified to increase patient survival, and can also inform the design of better drug combinations for these cancers. 

Padmini Pillai appointed as White House Fellow

The White House

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to Padmini Pillai! She’s been appointed to the prestigious 2024-2025 White House Fellows Program, where she will apply her immunoengineering expertise to key initiatives. Padmini is bridging the gap between discoveries in immunology and advances in biomaterial design to treat human disease. Watch the video to hear more about her project to force tumor cells to self-destruct using mRNA nanotherapy.


 

Nobel Prize goes to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun!

MIT News

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to alums Victor Ambros ’75 (VII), PhD ’79 (VII) and Gary Ruvkun for winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology or Medicine! They won the award jointly "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation."

Koch Institute predecessor the MIT Center for Cancer Research opened fifty years ago in 1974, just as Ambros was finishing his undergraduate degree in biology and beginning his graduate work in the laboratory of founding faculty member David Baltimore. In the 1980s, Ruvkun joined Ambros at MIT, both working as postdocs in the laboratory of H. Robert Horvitz, a David H. Koch Professor of Biology; both mentors are themselves Nobel laureates, in 1975 and 2002, respectively.
 

Congratulations to Sangeeta Bhatia!

MIT News

October 2, 2024

Sangeeta Bhatia is one of two inaugural recipients of the Kendall Square Association’s Founders’ Awards, along with Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s Michal Preminger. The awards were presented at the KSA Annual Meeting on October 1, accompanied by contributions to Science Club for Girls and Innovators for Purpose in their honor.

Less is more

MIT News

September 20, 2024

Irvine lab researchers developed a two-dose regimen that could make HIV vaccines more effective. In a study appearing in Science Immunology, the team reduced a schedule of seven escalating doses over two weeks to just two doses over one week. The new regimen is more practical for mass vaccination campaigns, but was similarly effective in mice at promoting strong antibody responses that will be critical for a successful HIV vaccine. The study uncovered biological mechanisms behind the vaccine response that could inform ongoing clinical trials and development of vaccines for other diseases.

The sweet science of tumor-fighting cells

MIT News

September 16, 2024

Laura L. Kiessling, Jeremiah A. Johnson, Alex K. Shalek, and Darrell Irvine have discovered a new strategy to reprogram immune cells for effective mobilization against cancer. In an ACS Publications study, the team coated virus-like particles with glycans to activate dendritic cells. These cells, in turn, sound the alarm to T cells, creating a robust anti-tumor response—laying the groundwork for a new generation of tumor vaccines.