News

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.

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FDA Greenlight for Verastem

Fierce Pharma

May 9, 2025

Verastem Oncology, a Koch Institute spinout, has earned FDA approval for a combination of avutometinib and defactinibto treat recurrent low-grade serous ovarian cancer. The oral therapy targets key resistance pathways, offering a long-awaited option for patients with this hard-to-treat cancer.

Cryptic Clues to Pancreatic Cancer

MIT News

May 8, 2025

Researchers from the labs of Tyler Jacks and KI alum William Freed-Pastor uncovered cryptic peptides presented on the surface of pancreas cancer cells for the first time. Cryptic peptides, found in healthy cells and other tumor types, derive from genome sequences not known to code for any protein. The discovery may lead to more effective immunotherapies for pancreatic cancer, which has one of the lowest survival rates and few effective treatments. A study appearing in Science and funded in part by the Lustgarten Foundation identified 500 pancreatic cancer-specific cryptic peptides. After testing 30, the team found 12 peptides could stimulated immune responses in cell culture, and the resulting data was used to engineer T cells capable of stopping or significantly slowing tumor progression in different cancer models. Freed-Pastor and his team at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have begun developing a therapeutic pancreatic cancer vaccine that targets cryptic antigens.

Where Universities Matter Most

MIT Sloan School

May 7, 2025

Universities are crucial to innovation—not just through research, but also training people who turn discoveries into patents, products, and startups. A new study from MIT Sloan School of Management and Copenhagen Business School shows that in US regions with low innovation activity, these university contributions can account for more than 10% of local patents and 14% of new inventors, an even stronger influence than in more economically productive areas.

Tailor-made genes

MIT News

April 30, 2025

Katie Galloway and her team developed synthetic gene circuits that enable more precise control of gene therapy. Their research, published in Cell Systems, could lead to new treatments for fragile X syndrome and other diseases caused by mutations in a single gene, ensuring more safe and effective therapeutic outcomes.

Resistance mapping yields novel drug combination

Cell Systems

April 30, 2025

A new Cell Systems paper from the White lab identified mechanisms that enable resistance to cancer therapies, offering new opportunities to intervene for better patient outcomes. Mapping cell-wide signaling networks remodeled by therapy in unprecedented depth, the study reveals new insights into cancer cell plasticity and demonstrates a new drug combination repurposing a leukemia drug against melanoma. This work was supported in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine and a graduate fellowship from the Ludwig Center at MIT.

Brainstorming treatments for gliobastoma

The Tech

April 28, 2025

At the inaugural Glioblastoma Tumor Microenvironment Symposium on March 27, led by Koch Institute faculty member Forest White and Franziska Michor of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, national leaders in glioblastoma research explored strategies for advancing models, therapies, and collaboration to accelerate progress against the disease.

Regina Barzilay receives IEEE Medal

IBM

April 25, 2025

Regina Barzilay has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Frances E. Allen Medal for her groundbreaking work applying machine learning to medicine. Honored alongside Miklós Ajtai, Barzilay was recognized for using unexpected methods to advance computer science and for transforming how AI is used in clinical and scientific settings.

Shaking up the STATus quo

STAT News

April 23, 2025

STAT has named Nancy Hopkins to the 2025 STATUS List, recognizing her for both her innovative work using zebrafish as a cancer model and tireless advocacy for gender equality in science. While helping to make science a more viable career for women, Hopkins also contributed groundbreaking research in genetics and molecular biology.

Is There a Pill for That?

Wired

April 18, 2025

Syntis Bio, a spinout from the Langer and Traverso labs, has announced promising early data for its obesity pill, which mimics the effects of a gastric bypass surgery via a temporary coating in the upper intestine. Interest in controlling obesity has surged as research uncovers its roles in cancer and other diseases, and the new pill is aimed at offering more effective and personalized choices for patients.

Making de-grade

KI News

April 17, 2025

CDK9 and MYC are protein targets for many cancers, but developing therapies has proved quite challenging. A Koehler lab study published in Cell Chemical Biology demonstrates a promising approach for controlling MYC via CDK9. The group developed a CDK9 PROTAC (proteolysis targeting chimera), a molecule that can be used to degrade, or break up, a specific protein and showed it overcomes a key paradox and potentially offers a broadly useful CDK9 strategy.