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Black and white photo of a bearded man in very 70s apparel standing in front of a banner with "David Baltimore" and the mirror image text'

Remembering David Baltimore

MIT Koch Institute

September 8, 2025

With sadness, the Koch Institute marks the passing of Professor David Baltimore. A founding faculty member and formative influence behind the MIT Center for Cancer Research, he was not only a ground-breaking researcher but also a compelling and thoughtful voice for science. 

His discovery of reverse transcriptase changed the prevailing scientific dogma, earned him a 1975 Nobel Prize, and directly enables work in life sciences and biomedical laboratories everywhere. His decades-long advocacy work impacted national policy debates on topics such as recombinant DNA research, the AIDS epidemic, and genome editing.

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Showing 111–120 of 662 stories

Recognizing Excellence

MIT News

July 11, 2024

Highlighting the exceptional expertise and essential research role played by our Robert A. Swanson (1969) Biotechnology Center, members of the Peterson (1957) Nanotechnology Materials Core Facility staff were recognized with the 2024 MIT Excellence Award in the Innovative Solutions category. Congratulations to Margaret (Peggy) Bisher, Giovanni de Nola, David Mankus, and Dong Soo Yun!

Primed for success

Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology

July 11, 2024

Carmen Martin Alonso, 2024 HST graduate, has been awarded a provisional patent for her liquid biopsy priming agents developed in the labs of Sangeeta Bhatia, Chris Love, and the Broad Institute's Viktor Adalsteinsson. Alonso’s priming agents make it easier to detect circulating tumor DNA in blood samples, which could enable earlier cancer diagnosis and help guide treatment.   

A SMART way to produce (CAR)T-cells

MIT News

July 9, 2024

Michael Birnbaum and researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology Centre (SMART) have discovered a way to produce CAR T-cells for the treatment of cancer. The technology, which uses a microfluidic chip roughly the size of a pack of cards, could lower manufacturing costs for cell therapies and enable point-of-care CAR T-cell production in hospitals. 

Stark wins V Scholar Award

V Foundation

July 8, 2024

Congratulations to Jessica Stark, one of a class of 15 recipients selected as part of the V Foundation’s A Grant of Her Own: The Women Scientists Innovation Award for Cancer Research, aimed at addressing longstanding gender disparities in research. Stark studies the interplay between the immune system and glycans—cell surface sugars—and how to leverage it to improve cancer immunotherapy.

Deciphering T cell diversity

MIT News

June 28, 2024

MIT News profiled Michael Birnbaum’s efforts to develop large scale screening tools to decipher how diverse T cells recognize their targets. Birnbaum co-founded Kelonia, which is adapting the approach to reprogram T cells to target specific antigens directly inside the body to treat a broad range of diseases including cancer, autoimmune disorders, and viral infections.  

Cutting out CRISPR bias

Broad Institute

June 14, 2024

A Nature Communications study from the Boehm Group and Broad Institute collaborators highlights an ancestry bias that can cause CRISPR screens to miss cancer dependencies. To help address this bias, which stems from the guide RNAs used, the team built a website of data tools to help researchers determine the effect of ancestry on specific guides. Ongoing work by Boehm, Francisco Sánchez-Rivera, and collaborators is supported by the Bridge Project.  

DINO-mite DNA polymers

MIT News

June 13, 2024

Inspired partly by the movie “Jurassic Park,” the Johnson Lab has developed an amber-like DNA-encapsulating polymer dubbed T-REX (Thermoset-REinforced Xeropreservation), for freezer-free long-term DNA storage. DNA itself has vast storage capacity that can accommodate genetic and digital data—everything from an entire human genome to the Jurassic Park theme song.

Langer named Kavli Laureate

MIT News

June 12, 2024

Congratulations to Robert Langer, who received a 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience! The award recognizes his innovations in engineered  nanomaterials for the controlled release of drugs and nanoparticles for the delivery of vaccines. Langer’s work has had immense impact on the treatment of a range of diseases including cancer and schizophrenia and was instrumental in the development of mRNA vaccines.   Watch the video of Langer accepting the prize. 

Catalyzing scholarly engagement

MIT News

June 10, 2024

Jacks Lab alum Rodrigo Romero took part in the 2024 Catalyst Symposium, a three-day event hosted by the Department of Biology and the Picower Institute for Memory designed to promote engagement among MIT scholars and postdocs who excel in their field and are from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in science. Romero presented his work on lineage plasticity in the tumor microenvironment.

An enhanced view of gene transcription

MIT News

June 5, 2024

Regulating when genes are expressed, enhancers are promising drug targets for genetic disorders—when researchers can find them. Enhancers can reside far from the genes they regulate and leave only tiny amounts of eDNA, short-lived clues to their activation. Sharp Lab researchers led by postdoc D.B. Jay Mahat invented a technique, described in Nature, to facilitate eDNA isolation and observe coordination of gene expression and enhancer activation.

This work was supported in part by the Emerald Foundation.