The Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT

Probing Enzyme Activity with Nanosensors

Using MIT ingenuity to create knowledge, tools, and treatments to fight cancer

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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.

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IntereSTING Cancer Vaccine Developments

MIT News

The Belcher and Hammond Labs recently engineered a therapeutic cancer vaccine that could potentially make immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapies effective for more patients. By stimulating the STING pathway, the vaccine eliminated 70%-100% of solid tumors and prevented recurrence with minimal side effects in preclinical studies of mouse melanoma and colon cancer models. Notably, the vaccine also showed promise in overcoming an immunodeficiency affecting 20% of the human population. Researchers hope the vaccine, Advanced Healthcare Materials, will make ICB therapies more effective and more broadly, viable for patients with loss-of-function STING mutations.

This study was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program and the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine.

At the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, scientists and engineers work come 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.