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Four headshots of winnners of the 2024 Karches Prize - Shandon Amos, Christina Cabana, Ivan Pires, and Jason Yu.

Introducing the 2024 Karches Prize winners

January 24, 2025

Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Peter Karches Mentorship Prize — Shandon Amos, Christina Cabana, Ivan Pires, and Jason Yu.

The Peter Karches Mentorship Prize is awarded annually to up to four Koch Institute postdocs, graduate students or research technicians who demonstrate exemplary mentorship of undergraduate researchers or high school students in their labs. The prize allows the Koch Institute community to celebrate and recognize the critical role that mentors play, both personally and professionally, in the early stages of a scientist’s career.

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Standing Innovation

National Academy of Inventors

December 9, 2021

Congratulations to Paula Hammond on her election to the National Academy of Inventors Fellows Program. The program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.

Creating a Cohort

MIT News

December 2, 2021

Following on last year’s boot camp, the MIT Future Founders Initiative, initiated by KI members Sangeeta Bhatia, Susan Hockfield, and Nancy Hopkins, announced its $250K prize competition to promote female entrepreneurs in biotech. KI faculty members Laurie Boyer and Kristin Knouse are among the finalists, as is KI alum Canan Dagdeviren. Learn more about the program's origins and goals in Bhatia's recent interview with the Kendall Square Association.

Mirai Goes Global

STAT News

November 30, 2021

Mirai, a machine learning model for breast cancer risk prediction, is heading to seven hospitals around the world. Researchers hope to minimize Mirai’s bias by testing its performance in patient populations with diverse clinical and demographic backgrounds. The model was developed by a team led by KI member Regina Barzilay and was recently featured in The Washington Post and on Good Morning America.

Immune Cell Masquerade

MIT News

November 30, 2021

Spranger Lab researchers describe how a subset of immune cells known as type-2 conventional dendritic cells (DC2) cloak themselves in cancer-associated proteins to provoke an immune response against tumors. Their findings, published in Immunity, indicate that these stealthy operations are driven by the signaling molecule type-1 interferon, suggesting new strategies for targeted immunotherapy.

Moderna Man

Forbes

November 17, 2021

Nature Biotechnology has named KI faculty member and Moderna co-founder Robert Langer among the top 20 translational researchers of 2020. In an interview with Forbes contributor Jack Kelly, Langer discusses his career path from struggling graduate student to MIT Institute Professor, reflecting on the the importance of mentorship, dreaming big, and learning how to deal with failure.

Stem Cells Loom Large as Aging Factor

MIT News

November 17, 2021

New research from the Amon Lab suggests that size is an important factor in cellular aging. The study, supported in part by the MIT Stem Cell Initiative and published in Science Advances, showed that blood stem cells grow larger as they age, and that as they grow in size, they become less able to generate new blood cells.

Fundamentally Curious

MIT Koch Institute

November 11, 2021

“The best science comes from those who are fundamentally curious.” So reads new lettering in the west wing of the Koch Institute Public Galleries, alongside a dedicated plaque celebrating the life and work of Angelika Amon. The unveiling ceremony, attended by Angelika’s family and close colleagues, also debuted a new exhibit celebrating MIT’s rich legacy of discovery science—an endeavor near and dear to Angelika’s heart—and announced the creation of the Amon Young Scientist Award to support exchange of ideas between MIT and international researchers.

Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research $25M gift to accelerate cancer research

MIT Koch Institute

November 11, 2021

The Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research has pledged $25 million to the Bridge Project, a collaboration between the Koch Institute and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC). Together with matching gifts to be raised by MIT and DF/HCC, these funds will support projects near or already in the clinic, particularly those focusing on traditionally challenging classes of cancer drug targets or on more conventional targets found in rarer forms of cancer.

Stem Cells and Colon Cancer

Spectrum MIT

November 10, 2021

MIT Stem Cell Initiative investigators Ömer Yilmaz and Alex Shalek are investigating the impacts of high-fat diets on intestinal stem cells. Applying Shalek’s single-cell sequencing tools to three-dimensional colon tumor models called organoids developed in the Yilmaz Lab, their teams seek to understand how changes induced by high-fat diets in these stem cells can lead to cancer. The work of the MIT Stem Cell Initiative is supported by Fondation MIT.

Modeling the Mechanisms of Metastasis

MIT News

November 8, 2021

A team co-led by Roger Kamm has received a $7.8 million, five-year U54 grant to join National Institutes of Health’s inaugural group of Metastasis Research Network Centers. The team will study how metastasizing tumor cells adapt to mechanical stresses, as well as how these stressors impact cell fate, including cell death, dormancy, or proliferation.