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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 371–380 of 595 stories

Barzilay Argues for Equity in AI-Influenced Health Care

Stat News

December 3, 2020

Machine learning pioneer Regina Barzilay is holding AI developers to a higher standard, flagging commonly-used machine learning models as likely perpetrators of health care inequities. Barzilay cites her experience image-based breast cancer risk prediction, where existing AI models assessed white women’s risks more accurately than for women of African and Asian descent. (subscription required)

Conducting Research in a New Way

MIT News

November 24, 2020

A new imaging technique from the Boyden Lab, published in Cell, identifies up to five different molecule types from random, distinct locations throughout a cell, uncovering a full “symphony” of cellular activity. The technology will be instrumental in understanding how cell signaling differs between cells from healthy and diseased tissue. 

Small Molecule, Big Potential

MIT News

November 20, 2020

A multidisciplinary team from the Koehler Lab identified a compound that could target key proteins in advanced prostate cancer, as well as a variety of other cancer types. The compound, KI-ARv-03, works by selectively binding to an androgen receptor cofactor known as CDK9, thereby destabilizing androgen receptor proteins in a key pathway contributing to the development of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and curbing the expression of associated oncogenes. The study appears in Cell Chemical Biology and was supported in part by the Koch Institute-Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Bridge Project, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., via the Transcend partnership.

Kronos Bio, co-founded by Koehler, has developed a more powerful version of the CDK9 inhibitor, KB-0742 and recently received IND clearance to begin a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in 2021. Preclinical tests in cell lines and mouse models revealed significantly reduced tumor growth in CRPC models and other oncogene-addicted cancers.

Age of Senescence

MIT Biology

November 16, 2020

The Hemann and Walker labs previously discovered that the compound JH-RE-06 enhanced the tumor-shrinking effects of DNA-damaging chemotherapies. While they expected JH-RE-06 to amplify programmed cell death induced by DNA damage, two studies appearing in PNAS showed that JH-RE-06, or genetically ablating the pathway targeted by JH-RE-06, instead puts tumor cells in a permanently dormant state known as senescence. Because senescent cells are often cleared by immune cells, these findings suggest a complementary approach to traditional chemotherapies. 

Growing Evidence

bioRxiv

November 13, 2020

In a biorxiv paper posted two days before Amon’s passing, researchers in her group, with collaborators in the Lees and Yilmaz labs, illuminate the relationship between stem cell size and function, and tissue aging. Despite great variability in cell size and shape between tissues, stem cells are invariably small. The Amon lab’s studies present evidence that small size is critical for hematopoietic stem cell function. Analyses of these cells also showed that they get progressively bigger with organismal aging, and that the larger stem cells are less functional. These findings suggest that large size causes stem cell function to decline during aging. This work was partly supported by the MIT Stem Cell Initiative.

Freeze Frame

Structure

November 13, 2020

The KI’s Robert A. Swanson (1969) Biotechnology Center regularly adapts and evolves specialized techniques and technologies. In a cover-winning Structure paper, researchers from the Peterson (1957) Nanotechnology Materials Core Facility have developed a new 3D imaging workflow that integrates three imaging approaches to visualize the same sample at cryogenic temperature at different scales, providing a unique view into features of cell structure. Demonstrated in yeast, the process could be used for large-scale studies of frozen specimens in healthy, diseased, and therapeutic conditions. Currently, the research team is the only one in the US with the specific technological capabilities—volume cryo-focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy, cryo-fluorescence confocal microscopy, and transmission cryo-electron tomography—to run this entire workflow.

Vaccine Around Town

Spectrum

November 13, 2020

Spectrum showcases two cancer- and pandemic-relevant research projects in their COVID-19-themed fall issue. Love Lab researchers are optimizing their rapid vaccine development platform to accelerate the advancement and production of COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The Chen Lab is exploring vaccine enhancement agents to improve immune response and decrease inflammation.

Positive Signals

PR Newswire

November 13, 2020

Results were recently announced from a Phase 2 trial, launched with support from the Bridge Project, to test a synergistic drug combination identified in the Yaffe lab. Patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer were assigned one of three different dosing schedules; the majority saw improved or stable disease in all three groups. Additionally, the team has identified a biomarker associated with therapeutic response.

Companion Diagnostics Approved

MIT Koch Institute

November 13, 2020

Foundation Medicine, co-founded by KI member Eric Lander, has announced two FDA approvals for two of its diagnostic tools—a blood-based biopsy to identify patients with BRCA1, BRCA2, and/or ATM alterations in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, and a genomic test to seek out patients who express the NTRK1/2/3 gene fusions in a range of solid tumors.

Remembering Angelika 

MIT News

October 30, 2020

The Koch Institute mourns the loss and honors the life of Angelika Amon, professor of biology and Kathleen and Curtis (1963) Marble Professor of Cancer Research, who died on October 29, 2020, at age 53, following a two-and-a-half-year battle with ovarian cancer. A pioneer in the study of aneuploidy, Amon made profound contributions to our understanding of the fundamental biology of the cell and the role of chromosome mis-segregation in cancer. Throughout her career, she inspired others with her characteristic perseverance, curiosity, and enthusiasm for discovery, and her broad interest in the world around her. Amon was a dedicated mentor and a fearless advocate for science and the rights of women and minorities. Her deep network of scientific collaborations and friendships reflects the light and passion she brought to every endeavor, both in and beyond the laboratory. Notes Koch Institute director Tyler Jacks, “Angelika was a force of nature... and has made an incredible impact on the world—one that will last long into the future.”

MIT News Obituary | MIT Faculty Resolution | The Scientist | The Boston Globe | Science | Developmental Cell | Cancer Cell | Research Institute of Molecular Pathology | Journal of Cell Science