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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 51–60 of 595 stories

Langer named Kavli Laureate

MIT News

June 12, 2024

Congratulations to Robert Langer, who received a 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience! The award recognizes his innovations in engineered  nanomaterials for the controlled release of drugs and nanoparticles for the delivery of vaccines. Langer’s work has had immense impact on the treatment of a range of diseases including cancer and schizophrenia and was instrumental in the development of mRNA vaccines. 

Catalyzing scholarly engagement

MIT News

June 10, 2024

Jacks Lab alum Rodrigo Romero took part in the 2024 Catalyst Symposium, a three-day event hosted by the Department of Biology and the Picower Institute for Memory designed to promote engagement among MIT scholars and postdocs who excel in their field and are from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in science. Romero presented his work on lineage plasticity in the tumor microenvironment.

An enhanced view of gene transcription

MIT News

June 5, 2024

Regulating when genes are expressed, enhancers are promising drug targets for genetic disorders—when researchers can find them. Enhancers can reside far from the genes they regulate and leave only tiny amounts of eDNA, short-lived clues to their activation. Sharp Lab researchers led by postdoc D.B. Jay Mahat invented a technique, described in Nature, to facilitate eDNA isolation and observe coordination of gene expression and enhancer activation.

This work was supported in part by the Emerald Foundation.

Kinase atlas complete

MIT News

June 3, 2024

In a new Nature paper, the Yaffe Lab and collaborators map tyrosine kinase enzymes to their targets. This study, partly supported by the Charles and Marjorie Holloway Foundation and the L. Scott Ritterbush fund, builds on recent work mapping the other major kinase families to form a complete kinase atlas. This tool will enable researchers to map cell signaling pathways with unprecedented speed and detail, uncovering new biological insights and therapeutic targets for cancer.
 

Brio trio

MIT News

May 20, 2024

Of MIT’s 11 Fulbright winners this year, three hail from KI labs. Anusha Puri (Weinberg) is headed to the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne; Charvi Sharma (Yaffe) will teach English in Spain before resuming her clinician-scientist career path; and Isabella Witham (Belcher) is off to Seoul National University’s Biomimetic Materials and Stem Cell Engineering Lab.
The U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers one-year opportunities for overseas research, graduate study, or English language teaching to American students and recent alums.  

RNAi: An MIT case study

MIT News

May 13, 2024

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of cancer research at MIT, a feature story tracing Alnylam’s success in developing RNAi therapies perfectly encapsulates the transformational impact and disciplinary diversity that characterize our community.  Incorporating contributions from the Sharp and Langer Labs, with their alumni and colleagues, Alnylam has several medicines approved by the FDA and a rapidly expanding clinical pipeline.

Engineering flexibility

MIT News

May 10, 2024

Combining microbiology, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, big data, and materials science, Belcher Lab graduate student Ashutosh Kumar’s research is a microcosm of the Koch Institute’s interdisciplinary model. Classically trained as an engineer working on steel design, Kumar is studying how the microbiome of ovarian cancer affects metastasis and treatment response.  His ultimate goal is to engineer bacteriophage viruses to reprogram bacteria to work therapeutically. Bacteriophage are a mainstay of the Belcher Lab’s signature research platforms, and being developed in a number of other ways for early detection and treatment as part of a larger ovarian cancer initiative led by Belcher, along with Sangeeta Bhatia and Paula Hammond.

Documenting innovation

MIT News

May 7, 2024

A new documentary, “Pathways to Invention,” follows a diverse group of modern inventors—all of whom are Lemelson-MIT Student Prize recipients, including KI alum Geoff von Maltzahn '03, PhD '10—as they develop life-changing innovations. The program airs this summer on PBS stations nationwide, including WGBH 44 Boston on July 19.  

Al Masri wins Soros Fellowship for New Americans

MIT News

April 25, 2024

Congratulations to Riyam Al Msari, a graduate student in the Irvine and Wittrup labs, on receiving a 2024 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Al Msari arrived in the US following a childhood in Iraq shaped by war, and a transformative experience serving as primary caretaker during her mother’s battle with head and neck cancer, which inspired her work to pioneer translational cancer therapies.

It’s a hard day’s night for the liver

MIT News

April 24, 2024

Just like in our bodies, circadian rhythms in our cells and genes regulate critical processes such as immune activity and metabolism.

In a Science Advances study, the Bhatia lab developed tiny, engineered human livers, and found that many genes involved in drug metabolism are under circadian control. Because these rhythms affect how much of a drug is available to the body and how effectively it breaks it down, they could be analyzed to improve dosing schedules for drugs, including chemotherapies.