 | Cancer Solutions science + engineering = conquering cancer together |
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| Volume 126: February 2024 |
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 | Hopkins to receive Public Welfare Medal Congratulations to Nancy Hopkins, who will receive the prestigious National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal for “her courageous leadership over three decades to create and ensure equal opportunity for women in science.” The award recognizes Hopkins’ role in catalyzing and leading MIT’s 1999 “Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science,” as well as her subsequent work to improve representation of and resources available to women faculty at MIT and beyond. |
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Better blood tests for cancer Liquid biopsy technologies leverage DNA shed by normal and tumor cells to diagnose and monitor disease from a simple blood draw, allowing earlier detection of cancer or recurrence and providing genetic information to guide treatment. New priming agents developed by the Love and Bhatia labs, with collaborator Viktor Adalsteinsson, improve the tests’ sensitivity, information yield, and patient applicability.
This work was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Casey and Family Foundation, the Bridge Project, and the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine. |
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An Expansive View of Glioma Cells Using their signature expansion microscopy technique, Boyden Lab researchers have imaged human brain tissue in greater detail than ever before. In a study appearing in Science Translational Medicine and funded in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the team found evidence that low-grade gliomas may be more aggressive than previously thought. The technique could one day be used to help doctors diagnose and treat tumors more effectively. |
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Pace Picks Up for Cima Lab Pretzel The FDA granted its Breakthrough Therapy designation to expedite development and review of Johnson & Johnson’s TAR-200 implant, now in clinical trials. Originally developed in the Cima Lab, the pretzel-shaped device is designed to replace bladder removal and outdated therapeutic regimens with controlled release of gemcitabine in the bladder. |
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| | | Greetings, Professor Stark! Welcome to Jessica Stark, our latest addition to the Koch Institute faculty. Stark, who also joins the departments of Biological Engineering and Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor, plans to develop biological technologies to realize the largely untapped potential of glycans for immunological discovery and immunotherapy.
She is already a finalist in the 2023-24 MIT-Royalty Pharma Prize Competition, alongside KI clinical investigator Joelle Straehla and KI alums Ritu Raman and Theresa Raimondo. Part of the MIT Faculty Founder Initiative, the competition supports women faculty entrepreneurs in biotech. |
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Congratulations to Paula Hammond, 2024 Franklin Institute Awards Laureate! Hammond wins the medal in chemistry for her "innovative methods to create novel materials one molecular layer at a time, and for applying these materials to areas ranging from drug delivery to energy storage." |
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Congratulations to Robert Langer on winning the 2023 Dr. Paul Janssen Award in honor of his groundbreaking work designing novel drug delivery systems. |
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Daniel Anderson and Ana Jaklenec were elected to the 2023 class of National Academy of Inventors fellows. Cheers to you both! |
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 | | “Part of the secret of life and the meaning of life is helping other people enjoy the passage of time. I think that we can all do that by working to solve some of the biggest issues on the planet, including helping to diagnose and treat ovarian cancer early so people have more time to spend with their family.” |
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Inhalable nanosensors, described in Science Advances and developed in the Bhatia Lab, could enable earlier lung cancer detection and make lung cancer screening more accessible worldwide. |
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Strand Therapeutics, co-founded by Darrell Irvine, Ron Weiss, and Weiss Lab alum Jacob Becraft, will be taking its programmable, cancer-hunting mRNA therapy to clinical trials. |
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The Weissman Lab developed a method for tracing the ancestry of human blood cells and mapping a cell’s lineage to its current behaviors. The lab is applying the method, described in Nature, to blood cancers and other diseases. |
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Researchers in the Irvine and Hammond labs have developed a vaccine adjuvant that uses a nanoparticle to elicit a stronger immune response. An HIV vaccine with the adjuvant is now in clinical trials. |
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 | 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. Read more |
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Dragonfly doses first patient with its seventh drug to enter clinical trials, an IL-2 immunotherapy with compelling potential to treat both “hot” and “cold” tumors. |
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Sugars on cells? KI investigators Laura Kiessling, Tobi Oni, and Jessica Stark study glycans’ critical roles in normal and cancer biology. |
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Beyond cancer and vaccines, Langer’s lipid nanoparticles conquer new tissues by delivering a potential therapy for inflammation in the brain, a symptom of Alzheimer’s. |
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