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Three mammogram images, side by side, with a breast cancer lesion on the third slide.

Under the radar

She Knows

October 14, 2024

While AI shows promise in breast cancer screening, studies reveal it falls short for Black women due to underrepresentation in training data. Without diverse datasets, AI struggles to detect malignancies accurately across racial groups. To improve health outcomes, data science researchers like Regina Barzilay are working to build more diverse datasets and develop approaches that ensure AI serves all racial and demographic groups equitably.

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Rhoda Zhang Wins 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition

MIT News

November 5, 2024

Graduate student Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang has won the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition in both the Graduate and People's Choice categories. With advisors Robert Langer and Ana Jaklenec, Zhang and KI postdoc Xin Yang are developing metal-organic frameworks and other safe, sustainable nutrient stabilizing materials to address global micronutrient deficiencies. They are also launching MOFe™ Coffee, the first iron-fortified coffee.

Picture perfect

MIT News

November 1, 2024

Laura Kiessling and Edward Boyden have increased the power of expansion microscopy to the nanoscale, providing a cost-effective and accessible alternative to expensive super-resolution microscopes. The technique, featured in Nature Methods, is a single step, 20-fold expansion of tissue, rendering nanoscale features of cells—such as organelles or large proteins—visible with a conventional light microscope.
 

Dual Defense Against Tumors
 

MIT News

October 28, 2024

Implantable microparticles engineered by Ana Jaklenec, Angela Belcher, and Robert Langer deliver phototherapy and chemotherapy simultaneously to fight aggressive tumors. Phototherapy, a newer therapy type, uses particles heated by a laser to target and destroy tumor cells while preserving surrounding tissue. In an ACS Nano study of mice, the team's microparticles completely eliminated tumors while reducing side effects from chemotherapy and significantly prolonging survival.

This research was funded in part by the Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellowship.
 

Matthew Vander Heiden elected to National Academy of Medicine
 

MIT News

October 22, 2024

Congratulations to Koch Institute Director Matthew Vander Heiden, for his election to the National Academy of Medicine! Professor Vander Heiden and his fellow 2024 inductees are being honored for their outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Recognized for his research on cancer metabolism, Vander Heiden—who is also a practicing oncologist—has uncovered critical insights into how cancer cells fuel their growth, leading to innovative therapies for cancer and other diseases. His work continues to shape cancer treatment strategies, making a profound impact on the future of medicine. This honor highlights his dedication to advancing health and science.

Under the radar

She Knows

October 14, 2024

While AI shows promise in breast cancer screening, studies reveal it falls short for Black women due to underrepresentation in training data. Without diverse datasets, AI struggles to detect malignancies accurately across racial groups. To improve health outcomes, data science researchers like Regina Barzilay are working to build more diverse datasets and develop approaches that ensure AI serves all racial and demographic groups equitably.

Compressed is more

Nature

October 10, 2024

The Shalek lab has been working to advance drug discovery and biological inquiry by using in vitro model systems that recapitulate disease biology with high fidelity. Because such systems often yield limited numbers of samples for analysis, the team has developed a compressed screening platform that pools tests of biochemical perturbations and then computationally deconvolutes results in the phenotypes of cells to reduce sample size, labor, and cost. 

Congratulations to alum Kaitlyn Sadtler!

Time Magazine

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to alum Kaitlyn Sadtler! She landed a spot on the TIME100 Next list, which recognizes emerging leaders from around the world who are shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership. Sadtler worked in the Langer and Anderson labs focusing on how the modulation of immune response influenced tissue development.
 

A new mechanism for an old drug

MIT News

October 7, 2024

Since the 1950s, the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) has been commonly used to treat many cancers with the understanding that it works by damaging DNA and inhibiting the synthesis of its building blocks. A new study from the Yaffe Lab shows instead that, when used clinically for colon and other gastrointestinal cancers, the drug actually kills tumor cells by interfering with RNA synthesis important for making new ribosomes.  The findings, published in Cell Reports Medicine, helps explain how treatments that combine 5-FU with DNA-damaging chemotherapies could be modified to increase patient survival, and can also inform the design of better drug combinations for these cancers. 

Padmini Pillai appointed as White House Fellow

The White House

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to Padmini Pillai! She’s been appointed to the prestigious 2024-2025 White House Fellows Program, where she will apply her immunoengineering expertise to key initiatives. Padmini is bridging the gap between discoveries in immunology and advances in biomaterial design to treat human disease. Watch the video to hear more about her project to force tumor cells to self-destruct using mRNA nanotherapy.


 

Nobel Prize goes to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun!

MIT News

October 7, 2024

Congratulations to alums Victor Ambros ’75 (VII), PhD ’79 (VII) and Gary Ruvkun for winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology or Medicine! They won the award jointly "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation."

Koch Institute predecessor the MIT Center for Cancer Research opened fifty years ago in 1974, just as Ambros was finishing his undergraduate degree in biology and beginning his graduate work in the laboratory of founding faculty member David Baltimore. In the 1980s, Ruvkun joined Ambros at MIT, both working as postdocs in the laboratory of H. Robert Horvitz, a David H. Koch Professor of Biology; both mentors are themselves Nobel laureates, in 1975 and 2002, respectively.