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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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Hammond Named Institute Professor

MIT News

May 12, 2021

Paula Hammond has been named an Institute Professor—the highest distinction bestowed upon MIT faculty members—in honor of her pioneering work in nanotechnology, her excellence as a teacher and mentor, and her leadership on issues of equity and inclusion. When the appointment takes effect on July 1, she will be the third Institute Professor in residence in Building 76, along with Bob Langer and Phil Sharp.

Elimination Round

MIT News

May 12, 2021

Horvitz Lab researchers discovered a trigger for cell extrusion—a mechanism for eliminating unneeded cells—and suggest that the process might provide a natural defense against cancer. In a study appearing in Nature, researchers found that in the worm C. elegans many of the genes necessary for extrusion are involved in the cell division cycle. However, as extruded cells enter the cell division cycle, they are unable to replicate their DNA and consequently experience replication stress. Collaborators’ studies of mammalian cells revealed that replication stress similarly drives the extrusion of mammalian cells and that the well-known tumor suppressor protein p53 plays a role in the extrusion of cells undergoing DNA replication stress. Because cancerous and precancerous cells commonly experience replication stress, the findings indicate that extrusion may be a tumor suppression mechanism.

Soft Cell

MIT News

May 12, 2021

A team of researchers including Roger Kamm demonstrated that metastasizing cancer cells soften as they escape through a blood vessel wall and enter a new site. The study, appearing in the Journal of Biomechanics, may enable the development of new drugs that disrupt metastasis by interfering with cell softening.

Learnt to a CRISPR

MIT News

May 12, 2021

Few discoveries have accelerated biomedical research faster than CRISPR, the protein-based gene editing tool that allows scientists to precisely manipulate individual genes on a molecular level. Startup company KSQ Therapeutics, co-founded by KI members Eric Lander, David Sabatini, and Jonathan Weissman, leverages the investigators' CRISPR-based technologies to decipher the role of genes in diseases like cancer and apply these insights to therapeutic development.

KI Physician Honored

MIT Koch Institute

May 12, 2021

Congratulations to Michael Yaffe, David H. Koch Professor of Science and director of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, on his election to the Association of American Physicians. The AAP is a selective honorary medical society for physicians with outstanding credentials in basic or translational biomedical research. Yaffe, in addition to conducting research into cancer’s dysregulated signaling pathways, is a trauma surgeon and intensivist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Over the summer, he served as co-director of the acute care and ICU section of the Boston Hope Covid-19 pop-up hospital.

Redefining Endometriosis

The New York Times

May 12, 2021

The New York Times profiled Linda Griffith's efforts to pivot the conversation around endometriosis from "a women's issue" to "an MIT issue." Founder of the first lab in the U.S. dedicated to endometriosis and a recently elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Griffith has developed uterine organoid models to parse the genetic and molecular networks at play in the poorly understood disease.

Location, Location, Location

Massachusetts General Hospital

April 14, 2021

Matthew Vander Heiden and Bridge Project collaborators demonstrate in a Nature Cancer paper that metabolic differences between primary and metastatic brain tumors may serve as therapeutic targets. The research team showed that breast cancer metastases in the brain require fatty acid synthase expression because they must make their own fats, as compared to breast cancer tumors in the breast, where fats are abundant and accessible. Therapies that inhibit fatty acid synthase in these brain metastases may be a promising strategy for combatting these fatal and drug resistant tumors. This work was also supported in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

In-eight Ability

Genes and Development

April 8, 2021

Paradoxically, variation in the number of chromosomes each cell carries impedes the ability of normal cells to grow and proliferate—but not for cancer cells. By combining bench experiments with bioinformatic algorithms developed in the Barbara K. Ostrom 1978 Bioinformatics and Computing facility, Amon Lab researchers demonstrate how an extra copy of chromosome 8 in Ewing’s sarcoma helps rather than hinders cell survival and growth. In the study published in Genes and Development, researchers found that the EWS-FLI1 fusion oncogene, which drives 85% of Ewing’s sarcomas, results in replication stress and increased DNA damage. An extra copy of chromosome 8 alleviated the cellular stress caused by the oncogene by adding additional copies of RAD21, a gene implicated in DNA damage repair. The team’s findings offer new insight into the mechanisms behind tumorigenesis.

Hail Fellows, Well Met

American Association for Cancer Research

April 5, 2021

Nancy Hopkins and Aviv Regev were elected to the 2021 class of American Association for Cancer Research Fellows. Hopkins was honored for helping to establish zebrafish as an essential disease model—which has also earned her the International Zebrafish Conference's 2021 George Streisinger Award—as well as her research involving murine RNA tumor viruses. Regev was honored for her work developing computational approaches to understanding molecular circuits and developing technologies for high throughput, single-cell screening.

Congratulations to our 2020 Karches Prize Winners

MIT Koch Institute

April 1, 2021

The KI is proud to congratulate 2020's Peter Karches Mentorship Prize winners: Suman Bose, Crystal Chu, Dan Schmidt, and Molly Wilson. Each year, the prize recognizes the critical role mentorship plays in engaging the next generation of cancer researchers.