The Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT

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Celebrating 50 years of collaboration, innovation, and curiosity in cancer research at MIT

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Our Research Areas

From fundamental discoveries to engineering advances, we strategically pursue five areas of research that, across tumor types, are critical for rapid progress toward defeating cancer.

As a National Cancer Institute-designated basic cancer research center, we produce knowledge and tools to fight one of humanity's most persistent challenges.

NCI Cancer Center: A Cancer Center Designated by the National Cancer Institute
Detection & monitoring  
Metastasis  
Immunology & immunotherapy  
Nano-based drugs  
Precision medicine  

News

Nobel Prize Goes to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun!

MIT News

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to alums Victor Ambros ’75 (VII), PhD ’79 (VII) and Gary Ruvkun for winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology or Medicine! They won the award jointly "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation."

Koch Institute predecessor the MIT Center for Cancer Research opened fifty years ago in 1974, just as Ambros was finishing his undergraduate degree in biology and beginning his graduate work in the laboratory of founding faculty member David Baltimore. In the 1980s, Ruvkun joined Ambros at MIT, both working as postdocs in the laboratory of H. Robert Horvitz, a David H. Koch Professor of Biology; both mentors are themselves Nobel laureates, in 1975 and 2002, respectively.
 

Meet the 2024 Amon Award Winners

MIT Koch Institute

The Koch Institute at MIT is pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 Angelika Amon Young Scientist Award, Anna Uzonyi and Lukas Teoman Henneberg. 

The Spleen’s Crucial Role in T Cell Tumor Response

Science Immunology

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy can effectively treat some patients by enhancing T cell response to cancer—but it doesn't work for everyone. New research from Stefani Spranger, published in Science Immunology, points to the spleen as a critical site for reinvigorating anti-tumor immune response following ICB.

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At the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, scientists and engineers work together to solve some of the most difficult problems in cancer. We ask big questions in strategic areas, where the answers have big impacts on how we understand and treat cancer.