News

Five people standing in a row on a stage

Recognizing Excellence

MIT News

July 11, 2024

Highlighting the exceptional expertise and essential research role played by our Robert A. Swanson (1969) Biotechnology Center, members of the Peterson (1957) Nanotechnology Materials Core Facility staff were recognized with the 2024 MIT Excellence Award in the Innovative Solutions category. Congratulations to Margaret (Peggy) Bisher, Giovanni de Nola, David Mankus, and Dong Soo Yun!

Filter by

Filter by Title/Description

Filter by Topic

Filter by Year

Showing 21–30 of 563 stories

Kinase atlas complete

MIT News

June 3, 2024

In a new Nature paper, the Yaffe Lab and collaborators map tyrosine kinase enzymes to their targets. This study, partly supported by the Charles and Marjorie Holloway Foundation and the L. Scott Ritterbush fund, builds on recent work mapping the other major kinase families to form a complete kinase atlas. This tool will enable researchers to map cell signaling pathways with unprecedented speed and detail, uncovering new biological insights and therapeutic targets for cancer.
 

Brio trio

MIT News

May 20, 2024

Of MIT’s 11 Fulbright winners this year, three hail from KI labs. Anusha Puri (Weinberg) is headed to the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne; Charvi Sharma (Yaffe) will teach English in Spain before resuming her clinician-scientist career path; and Isabella Witham (Belcher) is off to Seoul National University’s Biomimetic Materials and Stem Cell Engineering Lab.
The U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers one-year opportunities for overseas research, graduate study, or English language teaching to American students and recent alums.  

RNAi: An MIT case study

MIT News

May 13, 2024

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of cancer research at MIT, a feature story tracing Alnylam’s success in developing RNAi therapies perfectly encapsulates the transformational impact and disciplinary diversity that characterize our community.  Incorporating contributions from the Sharp and Langer Labs, with their alumni and colleagues, Alnylam has several medicines approved by the FDA and a rapidly expanding clinical pipeline.

Engineering flexibility

MIT News

May 10, 2024

Combining microbiology, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, big data, and materials science, Belcher Lab graduate student Ashutosh Kumar’s research is a microcosm of the Koch Institute’s interdisciplinary model. Classically trained as an engineer working on steel design, Kumar is studying how the microbiome of ovarian cancer affects metastasis and treatment response.  His ultimate goal is to engineer bacteriophage viruses to reprogram bacteria to work therapeutically. Bacteriophage are a mainstay of the Belcher Lab’s signature research platforms, and being developed in a number of other ways for early detection and treatment as part of a larger ovarian cancer initiative led by Belcher, along with Sangeeta Bhatia and Paula Hammond.

Documenting innovation

MIT News

May 7, 2024

A new documentary, “Pathways to Invention,” follows a diverse group of modern inventors—all of whom are Lemelson-MIT Student Prize recipients, including KI alum Geoff von Maltzahn '03, PhD '10—as they develop life-changing innovations. The program airs this summer on PBS stations nationwide, including WGBH 44 Boston on July 19.  

Al Masri wins Soros Fellowship for New Americans

MIT News

April 25, 2024

Congratulations to Riyam Al Msari, a graduate student in the Irvine and Wittrup labs, on receiving a 2024 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Al Msari arrived in the US following a childhood in Iraq shaped by war, and a transformative experience serving as primary caretaker during her mother’s battle with head and neck cancer, which inspired her work to pioneer translational cancer therapies.

It’s a hard day’s night for the liver

MIT News

April 24, 2024

Just like in our bodies, circadian rhythms in our cells and genes regulate critical processes such as immune activity and metabolism.

In a Science Advances study, the Bhatia lab developed tiny, engineered human livers, and found that many genes involved in drug metabolism are under circadian control. Because these rhythms affect how much of a drug is available to the body and how effectively it breaks it down, they could be analyzed to improve dosing schedules for drugs, including chemotherapies.

It’s the same old thing, since 1916

MIT News

April 24, 2024

Based on one equation developed in 1916 using data from nine patients, chemotherapy dosing calculations do not account for several variables that can lead to toxicity or insufficient benefit in patients.

Described in Med and funded in part by the Bridge Project, the Traverso and Langer Labs developed CLAUDIA, a closed-loop drug delivery system designed to tailor doses of chemotherapy to individual patients for maximum safety and effectiveness.

Microfluidic device reveals leukemia cell behaviors in the blood

MIT Koch Institute

April 20, 2024

Scott Manalis and Michael Hemann published a new study in Communications Biology that improves our basic understanding of circulating leukemia cell dynamics over the course of disease progression and therapeutic response.

Understanding these circulation kinetics and clearance rates can inform our biological understandings of metastasis, as well as the design of tools that target these circulating cells for cancer diagnosis, treatment and monitoring.

Killian cancer at the nanoscale

MIT News

April 10, 2024

In her 2023-24 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award lecture, Paula Hammond showcased the layers that make up her mettle, from her childhood in Michigan, to her time as a student at MIT, and then her pioneering development of layer-by-layer nanomaterials for applications in cancer, medicine and energy.