News

Elazer Edelman Receives the 2026-2027 Killian Award

MIT News

May 13, 2026

Elazer Edelman received the James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor awarded to MIT faculty members. Edelman is recognized for pioneering advances in cardiovascular medicine and medical devices, including research adapting drug-coated stents for pancreatic cancer treatment. PanTher Therapeutics, which he co-founded, is testing the stents in clinical trials.

A new shot at boosting T-cell cancer defense

MIT News

May 13, 2026

Researchers from the Anderson and Langer labs have developed a new way to supercharge T-cell response to cancer with an mRNA-based therapeutic vaccine adjuvant. Unlike most immunotherapies, which activate immune cells via external signals, this approach targets the cells’ internal machinery. In a Nature Biotechnology study of mouse models of various cancers, the adjuvant enabled the immune system to completely eradicate most tumors, alone or combined with tumor antigen. It also boosted the T-cell response to influenza and Covid-19 vaccines, suggesting the approach’s utility for viral infections as well. 

This work was supported in part by the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine

Photonic Finish 

MIT News

May 12, 2026

MIT researchers co-led by Ed Boyden developed a powerful method for creating photonic devices by first laser carving hydrogel and then shrinking it to nanoscale. The team plans to adapt the technology for classifying cells flowing through a microfluidic device, which could help identify rare circulating tumor cells in a blood sample.
 

Jessica Stark Wins Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize

Business Wire

May 5, 2026

Congratulations to Jessica Stark for winning the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize! The award provides $750,000 to support early-career investigators with bold ideas and the potential to transform cancer research.The funding will help Stark’s group develop new kinds of precision immunotherapies that target sugars on the surfaces of cancer cells. These new medicines promise to extend the benefits of precision medicine and the curative potential of immunotherapy to more cancer patients. Stark recently described her work in Nature Biotechnology’s Five Questions series.

Chromatin in Motion

MIT News

May 4, 2026

The Hansen Lab is tracking how chromatin — DNA and structural proteins — moves across timescales ranging from microseconds to hours. In a study in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, researchers uncovered two movement patterns, one where very limited movement keeps only local regions in contact and another where distant regions slowly meet over minutes or hours.  The results shed light on how chromatin movement helps genes interact with near or distant regulatory elements.

Point of Order

MIT News

April 30, 2026

The Galloway Lab showed that the order and orientation of neighboring genes control their expression. In a study appearing in Science, researchers created tandem gene circuits (one gene after another) and divergent circuits (genes pointed away from each other). Because of changes to the shape of DNA that occurs during transcription, downstream genes were suppressed in tandem circuits and both genes were amplified in divergent circuits. Their findings could make it easier to design synthetic gene circuits that program cell and gene therapies.

Kumaresh Named 2026 Goldwater Scholar

MIT News

April 23, 2026

Congratulations to Deeksha Kumaresh on being named a 2026 Barry Goldwater Scholar. Currently an undergraduate researcher in Paula Hammond's lab, Deeksha, pictured at far left, is working toward an MD/PhD with the long-term goal of leading a bioengineering lab that uses computational and biological preclinical models to predict the efficacy and side effects of cancer therapies.

AI at MIT 

MIT Technology Review

April 21, 2026

An MIT Technology Review feature assesses the landscape of AI at MIT, highlighting Traverso lab drug delivery advances and the Barzilay group’s pharmaceutical industry tools as examples of success. Yet, Barzilay notes, anticipated advances in cancer and neurodegenerative disease have not yet materialized, in part because understandings of disease mechanisms are lacking. Her assessment underscores the need for continued basic biological research alongside AI approaches. 

Lilly to Acquire Birnbaum Startup 

Wall Street Journal

April 20, 2026

Lilly will acquire Kelonia, a spinout from the laboratory of Michael Birnbaum. Kelonia is developing treatments for a variety of diseases with its in vivo gene editing platform, including a single-infusion CAR-T cancer therapy that showed robust, sustained responses across all patients in early clinical trials.

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A BOOST for Better Livers

April 17, 2026

The Bhatia Lab engineered implantable, growing liver tissue that may one day be used to help patients waiting for transplants. In a study in Science Advances, researchers used their BOOST platform to rewire liver cells with a switch controlling a tissue growth program. Once implanted in mice and turned “on,” the resulting satellite livers were robust and healthy.