News

Strong and Stretchy

MIT News

June 4, 2025

A 2025 Koch Institute Image Awards winner, research lead by James U. Surjadi and Bastien F. G. Aymon reveals a 3D-printable metamaterial—inspired by collagen’s strength and flexibility—that offers new ways to study how cancer cells migrate through tissue.  

Density detector

MIT News

May 30, 2025

Scott Manalis, collaborating with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Keith Ligon, has developed a technique to measure single-cell density for predicting whether immunotherapies will work in a patient or how a tumor will respond to drug treatment. This method, detailed in Nature Biomedical Engineering, originated as a project funded in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine.   

Bravo: smarter breast cancer scans

NBC Boston

May 30, 2025

Recently featured on NBC Boston, Cima Lab alum Canan Dagdeviren is developing wearable ultrasound technology for early breast cancer detection. The device, embedded in a bra, delivers results for less than $3 and sends data to the cloud and the patient’s doctor, offering a valuable tool for diagnosing early stage tumors in high-risk patients.  

MIT Advocacy in Action at the AACR’s 2025 Hill Day

Koch Institute

May 29, 2025

MIT Koch Institute postdoc Meaghan McGeary traveled to Washington, DC to advocate for increased federal funding for cancer research as part of the annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Hill Day. Joining other early-career scientists in a mission to make more than 50 congressional visits in a single day, she shared her experiences with policymakers, emphasizing the importance of stable research funding.  

Alum-inating Metabolism

MIT News

May 28, 2025

Using its phosphorylation analysis tools, the White Lab has identified hundreds of enzymes, many linked to chronic stress response pathways, that cause metabolic dysfunction and weight gain when mice are fed high-fat diets. The study, led by Koch Institute alum Tigist Tamir and published in Molecular Cell, showed effects were more pronounced in male mice and that an antioxidant reversed most of the damage. Tamir continues their work on cell signaling and metabolism in obesity and cancer at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. This work was partly supported by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine and a fellowship from the Ludwig Center at MIT.

Reimagining the future of manufacturing

MIT News

May 27, 2025

MIT has launched the Initiative for New Manufacturing to reimagine the future of U.S. industry. The KI’s Chris Love, a faculty co-director for the Initiative and leader in manufacturing, says manufacturing is what “brings product ideas to people”—and stresses the urgent need to bolster biotech production to deliver medicines, create jobs, and maintain U.S. leadership.

AI ready to ADAPT

MIT Jameel Clinic

May 23, 2025

Regina Barzilay, with collaborators at MIT’s Jameel Clinic and Massachusetts General Hospital, have received ARPA-H ADAPT funding for AURORA, an AI-driven platform to personalize cancer treatment. By integrating imaging, molecular, and clinical data, the team aims to predict resistance and tailor therapies—advancing adaptive precision medicine for lung, colon, and breast cancer. Barzilay and her trailblazing work using AI to address cancer challenges and promote health equity were recently profiled by the National Academy of Medicine, to which she was elected in 2023.  

Investigating sex differences in glioblastoma

May 19, 2025

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer. The tumor affects males more frequently and severely than females, and while treatment resistance and survival statistics are uniformly poor, females show significantly higher rates of both one-year and mean survival.  With support from the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program and the Samuel (1966) and Benjamin (2000) Krinsky Research Fund, the Page lab is investigating the biological mechanisms behind these differences in hopes of uncovering new and targeted ways to intervene therapeutically.

Self-Starters: Built-In Boosters

MIT News

May 15, 2025

The Jaklenec and Langer labs have developed microparticles that deliver multiple doses of vaccines in a single injection. Described in Advanced Materials, these particles release payloads at precise intervals—potentially eliminating the need for booster shots and benefiting children in areas where follow-up care is hard to access. 

Going Beyond Standard Issue

MIT News

May 14, 2025

Working with clinical collaborators, KI researchers—including White and Cima lab members and Swanson Biotechnology Center scientist Stuart Levine—have combined multiple analytic tools to show that standard glioblastoma biopsies contain a wealth of untapped data about this aggressive brain tumor, its disease biology, and potential therapeutic response.  This work was supported by a fellowship from the Ludwig Center at MIT and Break Through Cancer.