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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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Remembering Scientific Pioneer Susan Lindquist

Whitehead Institute

October 28, 2016

The Koch Institute shares its sorrow with the MIT and scientific communities over the news that Susan Lindquist, Ph.D., Member and former Director of the Whitehead Institute, and extramural KI faculty member has passed away at age 67 from cancer. Susan was well-known as a trailblazer in the study of protein folding; her research has had profound influences in fields as wide-ranging as human disease, evolution, and nanotechnology.

Our admiration for Susan goes beyond her visionary groundbreaking research. Susan was a tireless advocate for women in STEM fields, and her inspirational career is one that will be lauded for years to come. Her tenacious, vibrant, and innovative spirit was contagious, and we are incredibly fortunate to have had her as a foundational part of the KI community.

Susan was a towering figure in biomedical science, a bold and creative scientist, a wonderful mentor, a role model for women in science, and a friend,” said KI Director Tyler Jacks. "Sue will be missed greatly in our community and well beyond. Our hearts and thoughts go out to her family and to the members of her laboratory, present and past.”

Read more about Susan's life and legacy via the Whitehead Institute, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and Cell Press.

Doubling Down on Immunotherapy

MIT News

October 24, 2016

They say the best offense is a strong defense and cancer immunotherapy is just that—leveraging the body’s natural defense mechanisms to overcome cancer’s immunosuppressive nature. KI researchers have designed a new immunotherapy that combines strategies developed by the Irvine and Wittrup laboratories to activate both innate and adaptive immunity. Their approach, described in Nature Medicine and featured in Nature's Research Highlights, shows unprecedented results eliminating large, aggressive tumors in mice, and offers great potential for matching the current effectiveness of adoptive T cell transfer at a much lower cost, thus leveling the playing field for future patients across the board. It could also be customized to target multiple cancer types, while simultaneously training the immune system to tackle future challenges if new tumor cells return for an instant replay.

Predicting Tumor Response for Personalized Cancer Care

MIT News

October 10, 2016

The KI’s Manalis lab, in partnership with clinicians and other researchers working under the auspices of the KI-DF/HCC Bridge Project, has mobilized their suspended microchannel resonators to quickly and accurately analyze how mass accumulation of cells in individual patients’ tumors changes after exposure to different drugs.

Thinking Outside the Dish

Cell Metabolism

October 10, 2016

Cell metabolism has been called the "Achilles Heel" of cancer, an opportunity to attack tumors as they consume essential nutrients to feed their hyperproliferative nature. However, many of the experiments exploring how cancer cells metabolize these nutrients are conducted in plastic dishes, several steps removed from an in vivo environment.

To more faithfully model these processes, researchers in the KI's Vander Heiden lab infused tumor-bearing mice with isotope-labeled glucose and glutamine (two important molecules for fueling cancer cell replication and proliferation) and compared their fates in both tumor and normal tissue. In both situations, glucose was converted to lactate at an expectedly elevated rate (cancerous cells are commonly observed to increase lactate production) but the cells' utilization of glutamine did not increase, a starkly different result than that observed in analogous experiments performed in tissue culture.

The conclusion that in vitro results cannot be applied uniformly to in vivo environments is not unexpected, but it is indicative of the importance of understanding the context in which metabolic processes occur. Using in vivo metabolic tracking presents an exciting opportunity for probing the metabolic properties of multiple tumor types in vivo, and can lead to novel insights into the biology of human cancers. Mouse models that faithfully recapitulate human cancers will be critical for identifying tumors' vulnerabilities within a given tissue and give researchers a "heel" up on designing therapies that target cancer metabolism

A New Release on Life

MIT News

September 14, 2016

Nanoparticles are becoming an attractive option for targeted cancer therapy, but do these new delivery methods interfere with their cargo's functions? The Hemann Lab teamed up with the MIT Department of Chemistry’s Johnson Lab to measure cell response to their previously developed high capacity nanoparticles. 

On the Origin of Mutations

Science

September 9, 2016

You can take the tumor out of the tissue, but you can’t take the tissue out of the tumor. In a paper published in Science, the KI’s Vander Heiden Lab presents strong evidence that activation and suppression of cancer-causing genes can have wildly different results in cell metabolism depending on the tumor’s tissue of origin.

To prove that tissue of origin influences tumor behavior, researchers utilized models of both pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) with identical genetic mutations. They found that despite having the same initiating events, the resulting cancer cells used branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) differently as they proliferated. Their results showed that the NSCLC tumors used free-flowing BCAAs to supply the tumor with essential growth nutrients, while the PDAC tumors decreased their use of these free BCAAs. Indeed, blocking metabolism of these BCAAs inhibited the formation of NSCLC but not PDAC tumors. As such, they concluded that therapies designed to impair tumor growth by suppressing enzymes needed for BCAA use would be most effective in NSCLC and that a different treatment plan would be required to slow the growth of PDAC tumors.

The Vander Heiden Lab’s findings suggest a shifting paradigm for personalized medicine, in which context plays as critical a role as the genetic drivers. In other words, those who seek to exploit the pathways that cancer cells employ to survive ought to consider not just how the journey begins, but also where.

A Hard Day’s Night for Tumorigenesis

MIT News

July 28, 2016

The KI's Jacks Lab wants to Let It Be known that two of the genes that control cells’ light/dark regulation are also tumor suppressors. Their experiments, conducted with Help! from a genetically engineered mouse model of non-small cell lung cancer, explore the effects of both night shift work and jet lag on tumor development and offer Something New in the search for exploitable drug targets as researchers work around the clock to fight cancer.

Biomedicine for the Convergent Soul

MIT Koch Institute

June 27, 2016

A new MIT report sounds the battle cry for increased collaboration and funding of integrative research bringing together physical and life sciences. Co-chaired by KI members Tyler Jacks, KI director and the David H. Koch Professor of Biology; Susan Hockfield, president emerita of MIT; and Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor, the report builds on a 2011 white paper and cites numerous examples of ground-breaking cross-disciplinary research. The report was formally presented at last month’s Convergence Forum at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (watch presentations). 

Do Viruses Make You Feel Funny?

You're the Expert

June 24, 2016

What exactly does KI faculty member Angela Belcher do all day? This was the challenge presented to three comedians on a recent “You’re the Expert” podcast, which brings together academic experts and sharp-witted humorists for a deep, humorous dive into the inner workings of top research laboratories. Listen, laugh, and learn about Belcher’s work engineering viruses and bacteria to create new technologies.

Keeping Up with the Koehlers

The Secret Life of Scientists

June 21, 2016

As a chemist with an appointment in MIT's Department of Biological Engineering, KI faculty member Angela Koehler is no stranger to the challenges of navigating multiple worlds at once. On The Secret Life of Scientists, Koehler dives into cancer drug discovery, mentorship, and how she and her husband, fellow academic and former KI postdoc Arturo Vegas, balance life in the lab with parenting three under three.