Tag: Koch Institute

Five MIT faculty members take on Cancer Grand Challenges

Cancer Grand Challenges recently announced five winning teams for 2024, which included five researchers from MIT: Michael Birnbaum, Regina Barzilay, Brandon DeKosky, Seychelle Vos, and Ömer Yilmaz. Each team is made up of interdisciplinary cancer researchers from across the globe and will be awarded $25 million over five years.  Birnbaum, an associate professor in the […]

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Scientists develop a rapid gene-editing screen to find effects of cancer mutations

Tumors can carry mutations in hundreds of different genes, and each of those genes may be mutated in different ways — some mutations simply replace one DNA nucleotide with another, while others insert or delete larger sections of DNA. Until now, there has been no way to quickly and easily screen each of those mutations […]

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MIT scientists use a new type of nanoparticle to make vaccines more powerful

Many vaccines, including vaccines for hepatitis B and whooping cough, consist of fragments of viral or bacterial proteins. These vaccines often include other molecules called adjuvants, which help to boost the immune system’s response to the protein. Most of these adjuvants consist of aluminum salts or other molecules that provoke a nonspecific immune response. A […]

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How early-stage cancer cells hide from the immune system

One of the immune system’s primary roles is to detect and kill cells that have acquired cancerous mutations. However, some early-stage cancer cells manage to evade this surveillance and develop into more advanced tumors. A new study from MIT and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has identified one strategy that helps these precancerous cells avoid immune detection. […]

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Hitchhiking cancer vaccine makes progress in the clinic

Therapeutic cancer vaccines are an appealing strategy for treating malignancies. In theory, when a patient is injected with peptide antigens — protein fragments from mutant proteins only expressed by tumor cells — T cells learn to recognize and attack cancer cells expressing the corresponding protein. By teaching the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer […]

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Robert Langer receives Dr. Paul Janssen Award

MIT Institute Professor Robert S. Langer was recently honored with the 2023 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for his groundbreaking work in designing novel drug delivery systems that can deliver medications continuously, precisely, and at controlled rates over extended periods. Langer’s pioneering research into biomedical compounds for drug delivery and tissue engineering has impacted a wide […]

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MIT community members honored with 2024 Franklin Institute Awards

The Franklin Institute recently announced its 2024 cohort of award winners, as part of its bicentennial celebration. Since its inception, the Franklin Institute Awards Program has honored the most influential scientists, engineers, and inventors who have significantly advanced science and technology. It is one of the oldest comprehensive science awards in the world. The 2024 […]

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Nancy Hopkins awarded the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal

The National Academy of Sciences has awarded MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins, the Amgen Professor of Biology Emerita, with the 2024 Public Welfare Medal in recognition of “her courageous leadership over three decades to create and ensure equal opportunity for women in science.”  The award recognizes Hopkins’s role in catalyzing and leading MIT’s “A Study on […]

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MIT Faculty Founder Initiative announces finalists for second competition

The MIT Faculty Founder Initiative has announced 12 finalists for the 2023-24 MIT-Royalty Pharma Prize Competition. The competition, which is supported by Royalty Pharma, aims to support female faculty entrepreneurs in biotechnology and provide them with resources to help take their ideas to commercialization.  “We are building a playbook to get inventions out of the […]

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Researchers improve blood tests’ ability to detect and monitor cancer

Tumors constantly shed DNA from dying cells, which briefly circulates in the patient’s bloodstream before it is quickly broken down. Many companies have created blood tests that can pick out this tumor DNA, potentially helping doctors diagnose or monitor cancer or choose a treatment. The amount of tumor DNA circulating at any given time, however, […]

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Inhalable sensors could enable early lung cancer detection

Using a new technology developed at MIT, diagnosing lung cancer could become as easy as inhaling nanoparticle sensors and then taking a urine test that reveals whether a tumor is present. The new diagnostic is based on nanosensors that can be delivered by an inhaler or a nebulizer. If the sensors encounter cancer-linked proteins in […]

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MIT community members elected to the National Academy of Inventors for 2023

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) recently announced the election of more than 160 individuals to their 2023 class of fellows. Among them are two members of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Professor Daniel G. Anderson and Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec. In addition, 11 MIT alumni were also recognized. The highest professional […]

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MIT’s tiny technologies go to Washington

On Nov. 7, a team from the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at MIT showed a Washington audience several examples of how nanotechnologies developed at the Institute can transform the detection and treatment of cancer and other diseases. The team was one of 40 innovative groups featured at “American Possibilities: A White House Demo Day.” […]

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Nanoparticle-delivered RNA reduces neuroinflammation in lab tests

Some Covid-19 vaccines safely and effectively used lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver messenger RNA to cells. A new MIT study shows that different nanoparticles could be used for a potential Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy. In tests in multiple mouse models and with cultured human cells, a newly tailored LNP formulation effectively delivered small interfering RNA (siRNA) to […]

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Angela Belcher delivers 2023 Dresselhaus Lecture on evolving organisms for new nanomaterials

“How do we get to making nanomaterials that haven’t been evolved before?” asked Angela Belcher at the 2023 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture at MIT on Nov. 20. “We can use elements that biology has already given us.” The combined in-person and virtual audience of over 300 was treated to a light-up, 3D model of M13 […]

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3 Questions: Darrell Irvine on making HIV vaccines more powerful

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called […]

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Immune action at a distance

For most metastatic cancer types, there are no reliably effective treatments. Therapies may slow the growth of tumors, but they will not eradicate them. Occasionally, however, treating a tumor in one location will cause untreated tumors elsewhere in the body to shrink or even regress completely — a dramatic but exceedingly rare phenomenon known as […]

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A new way to see the activity inside a living cell

Living cells are bombarded with many kinds of incoming molecular signal that influence their behavior. Being able to measure those signals and how cells respond to them through downstream molecular signaling networks could help scientists learn much more about how cells work, including what happens as they age or become diseased. Right now, this kind […]

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Gitanjali Rao honored at White House “Girls Leading Change” celebration

MIT first-year student Gitanjali Rao was honored at the first Girls Leading Change celebration held at the White House on Oct. 11, which is also the International Day of the Girl Child. Fifteen young women were selected by the White House Gender Policy Council for their work as leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, authors, climate change […]

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Ingestible electronic device detects breathing depression in patients

Diagnosing sleep disorders such as sleep apnea usually requires a patient to spend the night in a sleep lab, hooked up to a variety of sensors and monitors. Researchers from MIT, Celero Systems, and West Virginia University hope to make that process less intrusive, using an ingestible capsule they developed that can monitor vital signs […]

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Gene-Wei Li and Michael Birnbaum named Pew Innovation Fund investigators

MIT professors Gene-Wei Li and Michael Birnbaum are among the 12 researchers named 2023 Innovation Fund investigators by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Six pairs of scientists — alumni or advisors of Pew’s biomedical programs in the United States and Latin America — will partner on interdisciplinary research in human biology and disease. A biophysicist, Gene-Wei […]

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Studying cancer in context to stop its growth

Proteins called transcription factors are like molecular traffic cops that tell genes when to stop and go. If they malfunction — what scientists refer to as dysregulation — transcription factors stop orchestrating healthy gene expression and instead become a driving force for diseases like cancer. Unsurprisingly, dysregulated transcription factors have garnered a lot of attention […]

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An implantable device could enable injection-free control of diabetes

One promising approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is implanting pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin when needed, which can free patients from giving themselves frequent insulin injections. However, one major obstacle to this approach is that once the cells are implanted, they eventually run out of oxygen and stop producing insulin. To overcome […]

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Study explains why certain immunotherapies don’t always work as predicted

Cancer drugs known as checkpoint blockade inhibitors have proven effective for some cancer patients. These drugs work by taking the brakes off the body’s T cell response, stimulating those immune cells to destroy tumors. Some studies have shown that these drugs work better in patients whose tumors have a very large number of mutated proteins, […]

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Smart pill can track key biological markers in real-time

Researchers from MIT, Boston University, and elsewhere report a smart pill the size of a blueberry that could be a game changer in the diagnosis and treatment of bowel diseases. That’s because it is the first technology compatible with ingestion that can automatically detect — and report on in real time — key biological molecules […]

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MIT engineers design more powerful RNA vaccines

RNA vaccines against Covid-19 have proven effective at reducing the severity of disease. However, a team of researchers at MIT is working on making them even better. By tweaking the design of the vaccines, the researchers showed that they could generate Covid-19 RNA vaccines that produce a stronger immune response, at a lower dose, in […]

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