 | Cancer Solutions science + engineering = conquering cancer together |
|
 | Clinical progress for hitchhiking cancer vaccine
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. |
|
 | 2024 Brings Extra Pi to the KI Pi Day is in just two days, and with it MIT’s participation-based 24-Hour Giving Challenge! We invite you to celebrate by helping the Koch Institute meet our microchallenge goal, where day-of contributions from 125 donors will unlock challenge gifts from Lindsay Androski ’98, and Glenda Mattes and Steve Corbin, in memory of Don Mattes ’67, SM ’69.
This Pi Day will be extra special for the Koch Institute, as we launch a year-long celebration of 50 years of cancer research at MIT, beginning with the MIT Center for Cancer Research opening in 1974. Join us for events, news features, and other initiatives to celebrate the groundbreaking work of faculty and alums over the past five decades. |
|
|
| | |  | KI faculty take on Cancer Grand Challenges 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. |
|
| Irvine Lab postdoc alum Bingxu Liu has received the 2024 Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology, for uncovering how the STING pathway controls a variety of immune responses. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
 | Early SOX knockout could score cancer win
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. |
|
| “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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
 | | “That’s what brought me to Koch in the first place—that vision to take a convergent approach to cancer research and break down the barriers between individual labs and work together toward important challenges in medicine.” |
|
Don’t miss Regina Barzilay’s star-turn on NOVA on March 27. The one-hour film "A.I. Revolution" will feature Barzilay’s machine learning algorithm to predict breast cancer risk. |
|
|
The Jaklenec Group designed a nanoparticle made from a metal organic framework that both delivers vaccines and acts as an adjuvant to generate a strong immune response at a lower dose. |
|
|
Show your KI spirit and vote for our teams in STAT Madness—a bracket-style contest to find the best innovation in science and medicine. Vote for the Anderson and Langer Labs' inhalable gene therapy in Matchup 7 and the Traverso Lab's vibrating appetite suppressor pill in Matchup 10. |
|
|
Featuring several KI faculty members, the exhibition, “Under the Lens: Women Biologists and Chemists at MIT 1865-2024,” will be on view in Hayden Library through June 21.
Pictured from the accompanying digital exhibit: Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau (ScD ’37), the first woman to receive an ScD in Chemical Engineering, and the KI's own Paula Hammond ('83, PhD '93), fellow Course 10 alumna and first woman to head the Chemical Engineering Department. |
|
|
|
|
