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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 131–140 of 662 stories

Speeding up cancer gene screening

MIT News

March 12, 2024

The Sanchez-Rivera Lab devised a method to screen for the effects of cancer-associated genetic mutations much more easily and quickly than any existing approach. In a Nature Biotechnology study of lung cancer, researchers used a variant of CRISPR genome-editing called prime editing to screen cells with more than 1,000 different mutations of the tumor suppressor gene p53 observed in cancer patients. They found that some p53 mutations are more harmful than previously thought. The technique could one day be used to determine how an individual patient’s tumor will respond to a particular treatment.

This research was funded in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Casey and Family Foundation Cancer Research Fund, the Ludwig Center at MIT, and Upstage Lung Cancer.

Special delivery: Nanoparticles for RNA therapies

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

March 12, 2024

Sangeeta Bhatia and Georgia Institute of Technology professor James Dahlman co-edited a special PNAS issue exploring nano-sized solutions for improving delivery of RNA therapeutics.

In addition to their introduction, other KI faculty highlights include:

Targeting and monitoring ovarian cancer invasion with an RNAi and peptide delivery system | Sangeeta Bhatia with Paula Hammond

Electrostatic adsorption of polyanions onto lipid nanoparticles controls uptake, trafficking, and transfection of RNA and DNA therapies | Paula Hammond

Recent advances in nanoparticulate RNA delivery systems | Robert Langer and Daniel Anderson

New exhibits showcase trailblazing MIT women

MIT News

March 6, 2024

Featuring several KI faculty members, the exhibition, “Under the Lens: Women Biologists and Chemists at MIT 1865-2024,” will be on view in Hayden Library through June 21. Pictured from the accompanying digital exhibit: Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau (ScD ’37), the first woman to receive an ScD in Chemical Engineering, and the KI's own Paula Hammond ('83, PhD '93), fellow Course 10 alumna and first woman to head the Chemical Engineering Department.

Framework for vaccine success

MIT News

March 6, 2024

The Jaklenec Group designed a nanoparticle made from a metal organic framework (MOF) that both delivers vaccines and acts as an adjuvant to generate a strong immune response at a lower dose. In a study of mice appearing in Science Advances, the researchers showed that this MOF could successfully encapsulate and deliver part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, while also acting as an adjuvant once the MOF is broken down inside cells.   

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.

KI faculty take on Cancer Grand Challenges 

MIT News

March 1, 2024

Michael Birnbaum will lead Cancer Grand Challenges Team MATCHMAKERS, backed by $25 million over five years. Along with Regina Barzilay and Brandon DeKosky, the team will take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence to develop tools for personalized immunotherapies for cancer patients. In addition, Ömer Yilmaz will join team PROSPECT to help address early-onset colorectal cancers.

Early SOX knockout could score cancer win

MIT News

February 28, 2024

The Yilmaz and Jacks labs, with collaborators, have found that early in colon cancer development, cells that activate the SOX17 gene can become essentially invisible to the immune system. Further, blocking SOX17 may offer a new way to treat early-stage cancers before they progress, or aid prevention in patients prone to developing colon polyps.

This work was supported in part by the Bridge Project and the MIT Stem Cell Initiative.

Sharp Lab alum Albert Almada talks stem cells

MIT News

February 21, 2024

“Digging deep into the science is what MIT taught me." Albert Almada PhD ’13 talks about how his time in the Sharp Lab helped prepare him to ask new questions about how stem cells rebuild tissues. 

Machine learning model predicts drugs that shouldn't be taken together

MIT News

February 20, 2024

The Traverso Lab developed a method to identify drugs that should not be taken together. Led by former KI postdocs Yunhua Shi and Daniel Reker, the Nature Biomedical Engineering study used both machine learning and tissue models to predict whether drugs rely on the same transporters to exit the digestive tract.

STING Discoveries garner Michelson Prize

Michelson Medical Research Foundation

February 19, 2024

Irvine Lab alum Bingxu Liu PhD '23 (VII) has been recognized with the 2024 Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology for uncovering how the STING signaling pathway controls a variety of immune responses. In his prize profile he recounts how he became interested in science and, eventually immunology, before focusing on STING in his graduate research at MIT.