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Viktor Adalsteinsson

KI alum Viktor Adalsteinsson develops liquid biopsies to detect cancer

Slice of MIT

March 6, 2024

Cancer patients who undergo surgery are often left with a frightening question: Did the surgeons get all the cancerous cells? No one wants a recurrence of disease, but additional treatments such as radiation or chemotherapy have significant side effects. That’s why Viktor Adalsteinsson PhD ’15 has been developing tools to support better-informed treatment decisions: so-called “liquid biopsies” that can detect the presence of cancer from a simple blood test.

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Showing 501–510 of 537 stories

Timing is of the Essence

Washington Post

March 14, 2016

Cancer patients often endure a battery of different drug treatments to find a therapy that works. Scientists have known for some time that genetics help explain why certain drugs may work on one person and not on another, but new findings by KI members Michael Hemann and Doug Lauffenburger suggest that the timing of these treatments may also be a critical factor. Tumors evolve through various stages, and the team’s study shows that sensitivity to a particular drug can depend on the stage at which it is administered. Their findings indicate that there may be windows of opportunity for drugs that had previously been written off as failures for individual patients. Hemann and Lauffenburger hope that modeling methods will predict tumor evolution and improve targeted therapies to help combat drug resistance. This research was supported in part by the Go Mitch Go Foundation.

Fueling Cancer Growth

MIT News

March 7, 2016

Glucose is the main source of fuel that cancer cells use to divide and reproduce uncontrollably. For some time, this had led scientists to believe that most of the cell mass in new cancer cells comes from glucose. Now new findings from a group including KI members Eisen and Chang Career Development Professor Matt Vander Heiden and Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor Scott Manalis, suggest that the largest source for new cell material is amino acids, which growing cells consume in considerably smaller quantities than glucose. The paper, published in Developmental Cell, offers a new way to look at cancer metabolism, a process that Vander Heiden mentioned in a recent NPR interview plays an important role in cancer development.

Diet and Cancer

MIT News

March 2, 2016

New research by KI members Omer Yilmaz and David Sabatini sheds light on how a high-fat diet can lead to an increased risk of colon cancer. The team, who published their results in Nature, found that mice fed a high-fat diet exhibit an increased proliferation of both intestinal stem cells and progenitor cells that acquire stemness, both of which increase the risk of tumor formation. If the results hold true for humans, they offer a clue to explain the mechanism by which a high-fat diet contributes to cancer risk. This work was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, and by the V Foundation.

Immaculate Suppression

Genes and Development

December 17, 2015

The epigenetic regulator Bmi1 is known to promote cellular proliferation through its control of cell cycle genes. However, researchers in the laboratory of KI faculty member Jacqueline Lees have found an unexpected role for Bmi1 in melanoma, where it does not drive proliferation. Instead, the authors of a recent study published in Genes & Development find that Bmi1 supports melanoma metastasis by turning on genes that help melanoma cells invade tissues and survive new environments. Moreover, they find that melanomas with high Bmi1 levels are resistant to BRAF inhibitors--drugs commonly administered as the BRAF gene is activated in 50% of early-stage melanomas.

SQZ Named Roche's New Squeeze

GEN News

December 7, 2015

SQZ Biotech recently announced a cancer-fighting partnership with pharmaceutical firm Roche. Headed by Koch Institute visiting scientist and former postdoc Armon Sharei, SQZ also counts several Koch Institute members among its Boards of Directors (Robert Langer) and Scientific Advisors (Tyler Jacks, Darrell Irvine, and Christopher Love). SQZ uses a device invented by Sharei, called CellSqueeze, to engineer cell-based therapies for disease, most notably B cell-driven immunotherapies for a broad range of cancers. Earlier this year, SQZ was named one of FierceBiotech's 2015 Fierce 15, and the CellSqueeze device was named one of Scientific American's top ten world-changing ideas of 2014. Development of SQZ's B cells was initially supported by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund.

$20 Million Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research Challenge Gift to Expand Collaborative Cancer Research

MIT News

October 28, 2015

The Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research has pledged $20 million to the Bridge Project, a collaborative research program of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, to accelerate the translation of interdisciplinary cancer solutions toward the clinic. The Commonwealth Foundation gift, which will be made over the next five years, will double the number of grants available to fund these multi-investigator teams each year. It also will create two new funding mechanisms that will extend the pipeline of collaboration and catalyze the translation of basic research toward clinical trials. “Footbridge Grants” will enable new teams to form and establish proof of concept. “Expansion Grants” will provide follow-on funding to existing teams that are on the cusp of making significant advances toward clinical implementation.

Yaffe Lab Backs Cancer into a Corner

MIT News

October 22, 2015

Researchers in the laboratory of KI faculty member Michael Yaffe have discovered a drug-resistance mechanism in tumor cells: a backup system that takes over when p53 is disabled. By targeting this backup system, these tumors could be made much more susceptible to chemotherapy.

Bugging Cancer

MIT News

August 4, 2015

While biopsies of cancerous tissue can provide insight into an appropriate course of treatment, cancer can evolve, develop resistance to therapies, and find new pathways for growth. Now, researchers in the laboratory of KI faculty member and David H. Koch Professor of Engineering Michael Cima have developed an implantable device, small enough to fit inside a biopsy needle, allowing doctors to monitor cancer in real time. The device wirelessly transmits biomarker data, allowing clinicians to easily and inexpensively receive critical feedback on whether a treatment is working or needs adjusting. Cima’s device was covered extensively in the press, including in Boston Magazine and on Boston.com.

Freshly Squeezed Vaccines

MIT News

May 22, 2015

KI researchers have shown that they can use a microfluidic cell-squeezing device to introduce specific antigens inside the immune system’s B cells, providing a new approach to developing and implementing antigen-presenting cell vaccines. Through CellSqueeze, the device platform originally developed at MIT, the researchers pass a suspension of B cells and target antigen through tiny, parallel channels etched on a chip. A positive-pressure system moves the suspension through these channels, which gradually narrow, applying a gentle pressure to the B cells. This “squeeze” opens small, temporary holes in their membranes, allowing the target antigen to enter by diffusion.

From Body to Bedside

MIT News

April 22, 2015

KI researchers in the laboratories of David H. Koch Institute Professor Robert Langer and David H. Koch Professor of Engineering Michael Cima have developed an implantable device that could allow doctors to test drugs in patients before prescribing chemotherapy. When implanted in a tumor, this tiny device diffuses small doses of up to 30 different drugs — or combinations thereof — in surrounding tumor cells. After one day, the implant and a small biopsy of surrounding tissue are removed, allowing researchers to study and rank the efficacy of drugs. This research was featured extensively in the news, including in New Scientist, The Scientist, and The Boston Herald. This device is now an integral part of multiple translational projects, including a Bridge Project collaboration between David H. Koch Professor of Biology Michael Yaffe and colleagues at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center to test combination drug therapies for advanced prostate cancer.