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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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Showing 321–330 of 595 stories

Fate Accompli

Globe Newswire

June 28, 2021

Fate Therapeutics, founded by Rudolf Jaenisch, reported positive data from their ongoing Phase 1 trial of FT516, a natural killer cell-based cancer immunotherapy engineered using an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) platform. Eight of 11 patients with B-cell lymphoma responded favorably to the treatment, with six achieving a complete response.

Lodish Means Business

MIT News

June 24, 2021

Congratulations to Harvey Lodish and Hemann Lab graduate student Kate Koch on winning a 2021 MITx Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs for 15.480x (The Science and Business of Biotechnology), an interdisciplinary course that emphasized understanding the science behind biotech while exploring novel business structures and financing methods.

Fittingly, two Lodish-founded companies report positive news this month: Epizyme launched a new diagnostic program for follicular lymphoma patients and Rubius dosed its first patient in a Phase 1/2 trial of a combination therapy for advanced solid tumors.

Strand and Deliver

Endpoints News

June 23, 2021

Strand Therapeutics, co-founded by KI members Darrell Irvine, Ron Weiss, and Weiss Lab alum Jacob Becraft (recently named among Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35), has emerged from stealth with $52 million Series A capital. Strand is developing a platform for creating programmable, self-amplifying mRNA vaccines, and aims to bring its first drug, an immunotherapy for solid tumors, to the clinic in 2022.

On the Surface of Silicone

MIT News

June 21, 2021

Langer Lab researchers analyzed the relationship between the surface architecture of silicone breast implants and adverse effects that include scarring, inflammation and, in rare cases, lymphoma. The team hopes their data, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, will help scientist and engineers design safer, more effective implants of any type.

A Foot in Both Worlds

MIT Koch Institute

June 18, 2021

The Koch Institute Clinical Investigator program offers physician-scientists a unique opportunity to participate in cutting-edge cancer research while continuing their medical practice, and provides Koch Institute researchers with a frontline view of challenges in cancer treatment. Past and present Clinical Investigators joined program director Michael Yaffe for a roundtable discussion about the relationship between laboratory benchwork and clinical translation and practice, and the influence of the Koch Institute community and research model on their careers. 

Branching Out from STEM

MIT News

June 10, 2021

Before launching into a career in medical research, Jacks Lab alum Natasha Joglekar ’21 shares how combining a major in computer science and biology with a minor in women’s and gender studies has helped her build new frameworks for understanding the world, patient needs, and the social determinants of health.

Ribon is Right on Target

Business Wire

June 4, 2021

Ribon Therapeutics, founded by former member Paul Chang based on his work at the KI, has reported positive data from the dose-escalation portion of its Phase 1 trial of a small molecule PARP7 inhibitor.  PARPs (poly ADP ribose polymerases) are enzymes that regulate essential cellular processes, including stress responses that enable cancer cells to survive and evade immune detection. In a trial of patients with various advanced solid tumors, Ribon’s candidate was well-tolerated, demonstrated target inhibition, and showed preliminary signs of antitumor activity, promising signs as the trial progresses to the next phase. Chang’s foundational research was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund.

Celebrating Unsung Research Heroes

MIT Koch Institute

May 21, 2021

The Robert A. Swanson (1969) Biotechology Center lies at the heart of Koch Institute research. Supported in large part by philanthropy, these core facilities provide state-of-the-art technical resources and trusted scientific expertise to researchers at all levels, accelerating MIT’s robust cancer science and engineering projects to have the greatest possible impact on patients and cancer research. Over the course of this series of lightning talks and culminating panel discussion, experts in bioinformatics, high throughput sciences, and microscopy joined researchers from the Bhatia, Hammond, Koehler, and Yilmaz laboratories to profile their teamwork. The three highlighted projects—tracking the effect of circadian rhythms on drug metabolism, hijacking cellular recycling systems to break down challenging cancer targets, and longitudinal monitoring of organoids—exemplify the SBC’s collaborative nature and reflect on the unique environment of the Koch Institute. 

State of the Vaccination

American Association for the Advancement of Science

May 20, 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has interrupted delivery of health services for adolescents, including HPV vaccination for cancer prevention. The Koch Institute and other NCI-designated cancer centers and organizations have issued a joint statement urging the nation’s health care systems, physicians, and families to get HPV vaccination back on track.

Congratulations and Welcome

MIT Koch Institute

May 12, 2021

Over the next year, the Koch Institute will welcome three new faculty members, all of whom will be appointed as assistant professors in the Department of Biology. Kristin Knouse, who will join the KI on July 1, uses novel genetic, molecular, and cellular tools to understand how tissues sense and respond to damage. Francisco J. Sánchez-Rivera arrives in early 2022 and will study genetic variation in the context of cancer using functional genomics, genome editing, single cell genomics, and mouse models. Yadira Soto-Feliciano will also join the KI in early 2022 and will study how protein complexes assemble on chromatin and how disruption of these molecular mechanisms lead to human diseases including cancer.