News

Introducing the 2025 Karches Prize winners

November 25, 2025

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Peter Karches Mentorship Prize: Fangtao Chi, Emma Dawson, Amy Lee, and Richard Van. 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.

Ankyra doses first patient

Business Wire

November 17, 2025

Ankyra has begun trials of its lead candidate, ANK-101, an anchored IL-12 drug conjugate initially engineered in the Wittrup and former Irvine Labs with support from KI trainee fellowships and the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine. Given in combination with checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, ANK-101 will be evaluated for treatment of patients with lung cancer. 

Inspired engineering  

MIT News

November 13, 2025

At MIT’s 2025 Nano Summit, KI faculty showcased drug delivery technologies that took design cues from unexpected places to address what MIT HEALS faculty director Angela Koehler calls "some of the most transformative problems in human health." Ana Jaklenec explained how she borrowed techniques from the microelectronics and semiconductor industries to fabricate single-injection, multi-dose vaccine microparticles. Giovanni Traverso highlighted ingestible drug delivery systems inspired by squid and remora.

Mapped to purrfection

MIT News

November 4, 2025

Burge Lab researchers have created KATMAP, a framework for predicting gene splicing. While DNA is the same across most cells in an organism, gene splicing allows RNA to be remixed to support cells specialized for different tissues. Described in Nature Biotechnology, KATMAP can be used to investigate how splicing mutations give rise to diseases such as cancer and how nucleic acid therapies influence splicing. 

Can we demystify endometriosis?

WNYC Studios

November 3, 2025

On NPR’s Science Fridays, Linda Griffith highlights challenges in endometriosis—from ‘squeamishness’ around basic conversations to difficulties in clinical diagnosis—and promising research innovations in modeling and treatment. Her own patient-derived models are advancing this work, including collaborative efforts via the MIT Stem Cell Initiative to understand biological structures that may help maintain healthy endometrium and its stem-like properties.

Pumped to Beat Drug Resistance

Nature Communications

October 20, 2025

Anthracyclines are powerful chemotherapy drugs, but cancer cells can resist them by building efflux pumps—proteins that act like molecular “bouncers,” kicking drugs out of the cell. The Hemann, Yilmaz and Lippard labs have designed a “dual warhead” that retains anthracyclines’ cancer-killing power while circumventing efflux by adding features of platinum-based chemotherapies. A Nature Communications study demonstrates that the drug conjugate extended survival in mouse models of metastatic colon cancer and suggests new opportunities to combat chemoresistance and augment existing chemotherapeutics. This work was partly funded by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Casey and Family Foundation Cancer Research Fund and the Michael (1957) and Inara Erdei Fund.

Gut Reaction: Cysteine Supports Gut Healing

MIT News

October 20, 2025

A new Yilmaz lab study published in Nature suggests a diet rich in the amino acid cysteine may promote regeneration of the intestinal lining, turning on an immune signaling pathway that helps stem cells regrow intestinal tissue. The research offers insights into normal tissue biology and new ways to help heal tissue damage from radiation or chemotherapy treatment.

This work was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the Bridge Project, and the MIT Stem Cell Initiative.  

Dial M for modulation

MIT News

October 13, 2025

The Galloway Lab has developed DIAL, a platform that lets researchers fine-tune the expression of synthetic genes even after they have been delivered to the target cells. The research, published in Nature Biotechnology, allows for uniform, stable control of gene expression and could be used to precisely tailor gene therapies to individual patients or cell populations.

A Better, Faster, Cheaper CAR

MIT News

October 8, 2025

The Chen Lab is developing CAR NK-cells, a cancer immunotherapy approach already in clinical trials that offers notable benefits over approved CAR T-cell treatments. Their newly published study, which appears in Nature Communications, identifies genetic modifications that can make CAR NK-cells more effective, less prone to rejection or side effects, and simpler to produce.  The streamlined, one-step engineering innovation could enable development of off-the-shelf therapies that can be given to patients at diagnosis, several weeks sooner than traditionally engineered CAR NK- or CAR T-cells. The Chen lab and their clinical collaborators hope to run a patient trial of this new approach.

This research was funded in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund and the Elisa Rah (2004, 2006) Memorial Fund

Out of This World: Breast Cancer Detection Goes to Space 

Good Good Good News

October 8, 2025

Cima Lab alum Canan Dagdeviren launched a breast-cancer–detecting bra into space aboard Blue Origin's all-female crew in April 2025. This wearable ultrasound patch enables early detection of breast cancer. In microgravity, “10 years of tumor growth can occur in 10 days,” allowing scientists to fast-track breakthroughs in early detection back on Earth.