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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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Showing 51–60 of 580 stories

Framework for vaccine success

MIT News

March 6, 2024

The Jaklenec Group designed a nanoparticle made from a metal organic framework (MOF) that both delivers vaccines and acts as an adjuvant to generate a strong immune response at a lower dose. In a study of mice appearing in Science Advances, the researchers showed that this MOF could successfully encapsulate and deliver part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, while also acting as an adjuvant once the MOF is broken down inside cells.   

KI alum Viktor Adalsteinsson develops liquid biopsies to detect cancer

Slice of MIT

March 6, 2024

Cancer patients who undergo surgery are often left with a frightening question: Did the surgeons get all the cancerous cells? No one wants a recurrence of disease, but additional treatments such as radiation or chemotherapy have significant side effects. That’s why Viktor Adalsteinsson PhD ’15 has been developing tools to support better-informed treatment decisions: so-called “liquid biopsies” that can detect the presence of cancer from a simple blood test.

KI faculty take on Cancer Grand Challenges 

MIT News

March 1, 2024

Michael Birnbaum will lead Cancer Grand Challenges Team MATCHMAKERS, backed by $25 million over five years. Along with Regina Barzilay and Brandon DeKosky, the team will take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence to develop tools for personalized immunotherapies for cancer patients. In addition, Ömer Yilmaz will join team PROSPECT to help address early-onset colorectal cancers.

Early SOX knockout could score cancer win

MIT News

February 28, 2024

The Yilmaz and Jacks labs, with collaborators, have found that early in colon cancer development, cells that activate the SOX17 gene can become essentially invisible to the immune system. Further, blocking SOX17 may offer a new way to treat early-stage cancers before they progress, or aid prevention in patients prone to developing colon polyps.

This work was supported in part by the Bridge Project and the MIT Stem Cell Initiative.

Sharp Lab alum Albert Almada talks stem cells

MIT News

February 21, 2024

“Digging deep into the science is what MIT taught me." Albert Almada PhD ’13 talks about how his time in the Sharp Lab helped prepare him to ask new questions about how stem cells rebuild tissues. 

Machine learning model predicts drugs that shouldn't be taken together

MIT News

February 20, 2024

The Traverso Lab developed a method to identify drugs that should not be taken together. Led by former KI postdocs Yunhua Shi and Daniel Reker, the Nature Biomedical Engineering study used both machine learning and tissue models to predict whether drugs rely on the same transporters to exit the digestive tract.

STING Discoveries garner Michelson Prize

Michelson Medical Research Foundation

February 19, 2024

Irvine Lab alum Bingxu Liu PhD '23 (VII) has been recognized with the 2024 Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology for uncovering how the STING signaling pathway controls a variety of immune responses. In his prize profile he recounts how he became interested in science and, eventually immunology, before focusing on STING in his graduate research at MIT.

Clinical progress for hitchhiking cancer vaccine

MIT News

February 15, 2024

A cancer therapy vaccine shows promising results in Phase 1 clinical trials, provoking surprisingly strong anti-tumor immune responses in pancreatic cancer patients. Using technology originating in the Irvine Lab with support from Bridge Project and refined by Elicio Therapeutics, the vaccine hitches a ride on the protein albumin to the lymph nodes, where large populations of immune cells can be taught to attack cancer cells. The Phase 1 vaccine targeted two variations of the cancer gene KRAS. Elicio is currently testing a vaccine that targets seven KRAS mutants, and plans to address other KRAS-driven cancers, such as colorectal and non-small cell lung cancers.  

New initiative takes aim at women’s cancers

MIT Koch Institute

February 7, 2024

A new women’s cancers research initiative will pursue the ambitious goal of early diagnosis, detection, and interception of ovarian cancer and other intractable tumors. Led by Angela Belcher, Sangeeta Bhatia, and Paula Hammond, the initiative is supported in part by a gift from the Gray Foundation.
 

Bile duct cancer diagnostic wins AMA Grand Challenge

American Medical Association

February 6, 2024

Bhatia Lab alum Jesse Kirkpatrick won first place in the 2023 AMA Research Challenge for work developing a new diagnostic for cholangiocarcinoma—a rare bile duct tumor among the deadliest cancers.