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Photo of Tyler Jacks standing in front of a wall of colorful scientific images in the Koch Institute lobby and smiling for the camera.

Tyler Jacks Receives ACS Medal of Honor

American Cancer Society

March 6, 2026

Congratulations to Koch Institute Founding Director Tyler Jacks, who has been selected to receive the 2026 American Cancer Society Medal of Honor. The organization’s highest honor, this award is given to individuals whose work has fundamentally advanced the fight against cancer. Jacks is recognized for his extraordinary scientific contributions to the field of cancer biology as well as his leadership in shaping new, more effective models for collaborative, patient-centered research at MIT, non-profit Break Through Cancer, and the national level. 

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Upgraded Model

Nature Biotechnology

December 18, 2026

To help mouse models of disease better resemble human genetics, the Sánchez-Rivera group has developed H2M, a computational pipeline to predict mouse genetic variants that mirror the sequence and functional effects of human variants. H2M also performs mouse-to-human and other types of variant mapping for precision genome-editing tools. Published in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers share their database, libraries, and web tool online.

KI stars shine bright in Cancer Grand Challenges

Whitehead Institute

March 9, 2026

The Koch Institute made a brilliant showing in the latest round of Cancer Grand Challenges, which brings together the world’s top scientists and clinicians across diverse disciplines to accelerate progress against cancer.Stefani Spranger was a finalist for the DARK-MATTERS team and Jonathan Weismann joins the ILLUMINE team, both aiming to transform new insights into the largely unexplored “dark proteome” into cancer therapies. 

Tyler Jacks Receives ACS Medal of Honor

American Cancer Society

March 6, 2026

Congratulations to Koch Institute Founding Director Tyler Jacks, who has been selected to receive the 2026 American Cancer Society Medal of Honor. The organization’s highest honor, this award is given to individuals whose work has fundamentally advanced the fight against cancer. Jacks is recognized for his extraordinary scientific contributions to the field of cancer biology as well as his leadership in shaping new, more effective models for collaborative, patient-centered research at MIT, non-profit Break Through Cancer, and the national level. 

Mini Livers, Major Potential

Newsweek

March 4, 2026

A team led by Sangeeta Bhatia has engineered injectable “mini livers” that can support failing livers and provide an alternative to transplantation. A study appearing in Cell Biomaterials shows that cells injected in mice survived at least two months and produced key liver enzymes and proteins. 

Keene Abbott Receives Weintraub Graduate Student Award

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

March 2, 2026

Congratulations to Keene Abbott, PhD, on receiving the 2026 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, honoring exceptional achievement in the biological sciences. Abbott completed his PhD with Matthew Vander Heiden and is now a Research Fellow at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. The award is given by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, with recipients selected from an international pool of applicants based on the impact and originality of their research.

Spiky Success

Nature Biomedical Engineering

March 2, 2026

Immune monitoring in cancer, vaccination, infection, and autoimmune disorders requires detection of certain antigen-specific immune cells, yet because they are few and far between in the blood stream, finding them is a challenge.A platform from the Hammond and Irvine labs cleverly exploits memory T cells to induce circulating immune cells of interest to accumulate in the skin, which can then be sampled non-invasively by a microneedle patch. Recently published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, earlier work on this approach was supported by the Bridge Project and appears in the KI Image Awards Archive. 
 

Decoding Cancer Evolution 

MIT News

February 20, 2026

“We aim to decode cancer evolution and therapy resistance,” says MIT Biology’s new Assistant Professor Matthew G. Jones in a “3 Questions” Q&A. His lab combines AI, single‑cell lineage tracing, and predictive models to anticipate tumor progression, identify vulnerabilities, and guide strategies for more effective cancer treatment. 

From The Curiosity Desk

WGBH

February 19, 2026

On GBH’s The Curiosity Desk, Angela Belcher and Sangeeta Bhatia talk nanomaterial properties, light wavelengths, and ovarian cancer. Working toward better patient outcomes, they highlight the “huge window of opportunity” before precancerous lesions leave the fallopian tube and discuss their work on early detection and intervention. 

Love Lab improves drug production with AI

MIT News

February 16, 2026

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Love Lab designed an AI model for more efficient yeast-based production of protein drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.Led by former postdoc and Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellow Harini Narayanan, the researchers used the Love Lab's yeast-based biomanufacturing platform to develop a large language model that optimizes genetic sequences for protein production—an unpredictable part of advancing new biologic drugs to the clinic.The study reflects Love's longstanding interest in improving both small- and industry-scale drug manufacturing processes. His perspectives as co-director of the new MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing are featured in the MIT Technology Review.

Irvine Lands on TIME100 Health 2026 List

Time Magazine

February 12, 2026

Long-time faculty member Darrell Irvine has been named to the 2026 TIME100 Health, an annual list of the 100 individuals who most influenced global health this year. Irvine is recognized for his work empowering the immune system to fight cancer, HIV, and other diseases, including therapeutic cancer vaccine approaches developed in his KI lab that have shown stunning promise in trials headed by KI startup Elicio Therapeutics.