News

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

Introducing the 2024 Karches Prize winners

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.

Filter by

Filter by Title/Description

Filter by Topic

Filter by Year

A Farewell to ARMS?

MIT News

Fusion-positive alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARMS) is a rare, deadly, and poorly understood skeletal muscle cancer. Thanks, however, to a high-risk, high-reward grant from the Cancer Moonshot Initiative, this pediatric cancer faces a new adversary in KI member Angela Koehler. As part of a multi-institutional team, Koehler will use her signature microarray technology to screen for potential compounds that target the so-called “undruggable” fusion oncoproteins responsible for ARMS. The work is expected to open up new therapeutic opportunities for patients and inform drug development strategies for other challenging “orphan diseases.”

Here Be Dragonfly

MIT Koch Institute

Dragonfly, co-founded by KI director Tyler Jacks, launched its first clinical trial, a study of multiple solid tumor types, with a drug candidate called DF1001; the drug is the first from its TriNKET™ platform of NK cell-based immunotherapies to move into humans. The company also entered a partnership with AbbVie to help commercialize other candidates in its pipeline.

A Means to an End

MIT News

The Love and Shalek labs devised a high throughput single-cell RNA sequencing method for identifying T cells that share a particular target. Conventional RNA sequencing reads only one end of an RNA molecule. Yet, the variable sequences encoding for T cell receptors (TCR), which bind to receptors on target cells, reside on the other end. The new method, published in Nature Immunology and partly supported by the Bridge Project, complements the conventional approach by amplifying TCR-encoding RNA molecules labeled for their T cells of origin, then pulls and sequences them. The study identified T cells that produce inflammation in peanut allergies, but the technique can be applied to a variety of T cell responses, including patient responses to cancer immunotherapies.

Transforming Early Detection: More Than Meets the A.I.

MIT Koch Institute

KI member and computer scientist Regina Barzilay spoke with The New York Times and PBS’s FRONTLINE about how her own breast cancer diagnosis inspired her to use machine learning tools to empower physicians and patients alike. Working with physician Connie Lehman, Barzilay’s A.I. systems are improving mammography and enabling earlier detection—and prediction—of the disease.

Lumicell Hits the Home Stretch

MIT Koch Institute

KI startup Lumicell launched a pivotal trial for its Lumicell Imaging System, a final step toward FDA approval for the innovative image-guided cancer surgery technology. Supported early on by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the system was developed by KI member Linda Griffith, with MIT collaborator Moungi Bawendi and former KI administrator W. David Lee ’69. Lumicell’s system pairs an injectable contrast agent with a hand-held, single-cell resolution imager to scan surgical margins for residual cancer cells. Proprietary software produces real-time images that help surgeons take immediate action to prevent repeat surgeries, lower healthcare costs, and improve patient outcomes.

New Target for Small Cell Lung Cancer

MIT News

Researchers in the Jacks and Vander Heiden labs identified a new therapeutic target for small cell lung cancer (SCLC), an especially aggressive form of lung cancer with limited options for treatment. In a study appearing in Science Translational Medicine and featured in the NIH Director's Blog, the team used genetic screens to search for SCLC targets that could be tested relatively quickly and easily in a clinical setting. Researchers discovered a metabolic vulnerability to the loss of DHODH, a key enzyme in the pyrimidine synthesis pathway. They also found that a DHODH inhibitor brequinar—already approved for use in patients as an immunosuppressant—slowed tumor progression and increased survival in SCLC mouse models and was effective in treating two of four patient-derived small cell lung cancer tumor models. The study was funded in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine.

Cell-based Therapy Squeezes into Human Trials

MIT Koch Institute

Paving the way for SQZ Biotech’s first human trial, the FDA accepted the company’s IND application for a cell-based therapeutic vaccine to treat HPV-positive tumors, including reproductive and head and neck cancers. SQZ’s therapies, based on research by the KI’s Langer and Irvine labs, with MIT collaborator Klavs Jensen, activate the immune system against cancer. SQZ’s signature CellSqueeze device opens a temporary hole in a cell membrane through which materials can pass, in this case inserting tumor-associated antigens into peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Proof-of-concept studies demonstrating the potential of both the device and a strategy using B-cells (one type of PBMC) were supported by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund.

Bhatia and Young Elected to the National Academy of Medicine

MIT News

Congratulations to KI faculty members Sangeeta Bhatia and Richard Young on their election to the National Academy of Medicine. Bhatia was honored for “pioneering small-scale technologies to interface cells with synthetic platforms.” She is one of only 25 individuals who have been elected to all three National Academies—a distinction shared with fellow KI investigators Paula Hammond and Robert Langer. Young was honored "for fundamental insights into gene control in human health and disease, invention of widely used new technologies, and the development of novel therapeutics for cancer."

Golden Anniversary for Luria's Gold Medal

MIT Koch Institute

Fifty years ago, on the heels of a historic summer, microbiologist and MIT professor Salvador E. Luria learned he had just won the Nobel Prize. Shortly after the passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971 Luria successfully applied for funds to build a cancer research facility at MIT, overseeing its construction and recruiting scientists with expertise in genetics, immunology, and cell biology. As inaugural director, Luria and his founding faculty opened the MIT Center for Cancer Research in 1974, and quickly set the standard for investigating the fundamental nature of cancer.  Faculty members isolated the first human oncogene, discovered RNA splicing, and made numerous other seminal contributions to cancer biology and genetics, laying the groundwork for new methods to treat and diagnose cancer. In tribute to the individual who spearheaded the formation of the MIT’s first dedicated cancer research effort the Koch Institute is working, with friends and the MIT administration, to name the Koch Institute’s main meeting space the Salvador E. Luria Auditorium.  

Combating Resistance in Pancreatic Cancer

Cancer Research

The chemotherapy gemcitabine is among the most effective pancreatic cancer therapies, yet nearly all patients fail to respond or quickly develop resistance. A recent Cancer Research paper highlights work by the Hemann lab, in collaboration with the Vander Heiden group, to better understand how pancreatic tumor stroma—prominent fibrotic tissue that surrounds the tumor— limits gemcitabine response. Their findings implicate a metabolite known as deoxycytidine, which is secreted by stromal cells called pancreatic stellate cells, and inhibits gemcitabine processing in tumor cells. Their work suggests that reducing deoxycytidine production in the stellate cells may increase the efficacy of gemcitabine and similar therapies. This work was supported in part by a David H. Koch fellowship and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine; KI members Jacqueline Lees and Doug Lauffenburger are also senior authors.