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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 241–250 of 660 stories

Protein Shake Up

MIT Spectrum

February 1, 2023

KI member and Biology department head Amy Keating designs protein-protein interactions to thwart disease. Thanks to advances in DNA sequencing and computational tools, her lab's work has evolved over the years to include synthesis of proteins not found in nature—but with potential to block many diseases including cancer. She is optimistic about the use of artificial intelligence and other tools in helping her team make predictions about their invented proteins and build new structures from smaller ones.

Beyond Prostate Cancer

MIT Koch Institute

January 31, 2023

The Yaffe Lab has discovered a mitotic mechanism that causes the combination of abiraterone, a standard treatment for prostate cancer, and Plk1-1 inhibitors to be more effective against prostate cancer than either drug alone. In a study appearing in Cancer Research and supported in part by the Bridge Project, they also found that the combination of abiraterone and the specific Plk1 inhibitor onvansertib was effective against a variety of other cancers beyond prostate cancer, including some types of pancreatic and ovarian cancers and acute myeloid leukemia.

Brush Up Your Combination Therapy

MIT News

January 26, 2023

A study appearing in Nature Nanotechnology describes how bottlebrush nanoparticles are able to co-deliver multiple cancer drugs to tumors. Working with former Charles W. (1955) and Jennifer C. Johnson Clinical Investigator Peter Ghoroghchian and others, KI member Jeremiah Johnson demonstrates how his lab’s signature technology allows researchers to adjust the ratio of drugs to maximize synergistic effects. The platform could be used to identify new combination therapies or improve effectiveness of already-approved drugs.

Farm Fresh Immunotherapy

Whitehead Institute

January 25, 2023

KI affiliate Tobi Oni is one of two Valhalla Fellows at the Whitehead Institute studying cancer and the immune system. Oni’s research focuses on how cell surface proteins and alpaca antibodies known as nanobodies can be used to disarm—and even fight back against—pancreatic cancer cells.

Bonjour, Live μ

MIT Biology

January 24, 2023

Live μ, the first instrument of its kind in the U.S., has landed in the Peterson (1957) Nanotechnology Materials Facility at the Koch Institute. The French-manufactured high-pressured freezer allows scientists to execute a cutting-edge strategy called correlative light electron microscopy (CLEM), where fluorescent light microscopy and electron microscopy images are taken of the same sample. The Live μ, along with the Peterson Facility’s growing suite of resources and workflows, is available to the MIT community.

Foretelling Lung Cancer Risk with AI

MIT News

January 20, 2023

Sybil—a new AI tool developed by KI member Regina Barzilay and Massachusetts General Hospital clinical collaborators Lecia Sequist and Florian Fintelmann—assesses a patient’s risk of lung cancer over six years by analyzing a single low-dose CT scan.

Unlike current methods, Sybil can make accurate predictions without using demographic or medical information or a radiologist’s annotation. The tool, described in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and profiled in The Washington Post, could be used to identify individuals who need additional testing and closer management and could be particularly useful given the rising incidence of lung cancer among non-smokers. MGH is launching a trial of Sybil, and researchers plan additional testing to ensure that it will maintain its accuracy across diverse populations.

Barzilay and Sequist will share project updates as part of SOLUTIONS with/in/sight: Algorithm & Views on May 4. The work is funded in part by the Bridge Project.  

Committed to Caring

MIT News

January 17, 2023

MIT’s Office of Graduate Education posthumously recognizes KI member Angelika Amon as “Committed to Caring,” citing her generous and dynamic mentorship and her enduring support of students in and beyond the classroom. Amon’s legacy is further exemplified by the Amon Young Scientist Award. She is one of 15 faculty members in the current cohort of honorees, which includes KI member Michael Birnbaum, who was profiled in December.  

It Takes All Kinases

MIT News

January 11, 2023

Michael Yaffe, together with longtime collaborators Lew Cantley and Benjamin Turk, created an atlas of protein kinases—signaling molecules that regulate nearly all cellular functions. This resource, described in Nature, could accelerate the pursuit of new cancer drugs and help physicians customize treatment to specific tumors.
 

Kronos in Collaboration

Kronos Bio

January 9, 2023

Kronos Bio, co-founded by Angela Koehler to tackle “undruggable” cancer targets, has launched a collaboration with Genentech. Genentech will leverage Kronos Bio’s drug discovery platform—including its small molecule microarray—to identify compounds that modify difficult-to-target transcription factors, with the aim of developing more effective treatments for cancer patients.

Celebrating Together (Again)

MIT Koch Institute

January 6, 2023

In late 2022, an in-person celebration of the recipients of the Peter Karches Mentorship Prize took place for the first time in three years, bringing together multiple cohorts of winners with family members and friends of Peter Karches to recognize their contributions. The 2022 awardees were Stephanie Gaglione, Sofia Hu, Allen Jiang, and Chris Nabel.