News

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.

Wall Street Journal | Boston Globe | STAT News | CNBC

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.

Anderson and Langer labs launch "living drug factories"

Houston Business Journal

April 16, 2026

Daniel Anderson, Robert Langer, and their former postdoc Omid Veiseh launched Duracyte, a biotechnology company that produces implantable "living drug factories" that replace repeated injections and infusions with continuous, self-adjusting dosing. Duracyte plans to begin clinical trials for recurrent ovarian cancer later this year.

The Koch Institute shines at the 2026 AACR Annual Meeting

American Association for Cancer Research

April 15, 2026

This spring, Koch Institute community members presented research advancements to their colleagues at the 2026 American Association for Cancer Research and gathered laurels along the way. A few highlights include:

 • Director Matt Vander Heiden and Alice Shaw, the Koch Institute's first Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Clinical Investigator, were formally inducted into the 2026 class of Fellows of the AACR Academy.
 
 • Regina Barzilay explored how AI may enhance prediction of cancer risk and treatment response at the Opening Plenary, focusing on MIRAI, a tool for assessing breast cancer risk, and SPARC, a tool for predicting cancer survival and therapy response.

 • Jesse Boehm, along with the Broad Institute Cancer Dependency Map team, won the 2026 Team Science Award for their work creating a comprehensive resource that reveals genes and pathways essential for tumor survival.

Eliezer Calo on ribosome biogenesis in disease

MIT News

April 9, 2026

Eliezer Calo investigates the genetic basis of craniofacial disorders, using disease-associated mutations to uncover fundamental mechanisms of protein synthesis. As highlighted in a recent MIT News profile, his work reveals how defects in ribosome biogenesis and nucleolar organization disrupt protein production and shape embryonic development.

Down to the last drop: measuring water content in tumor models

Science Advances

April 6, 2026

A new approach from the Manalis lab enables, for the first time, precise, quantitative measurement of water content within individual samples of complex 3D biological models. In a Science Advances paper, the team demonstrated their technique in patient-derived glioblastoma tumor spheroids. By adapting an industrial-grade steel capillary tube into a mechanical resonator that inertially senses particle mass, the researchers were able to determine spheroid water content and detect changes in response to perturbations.Their approach opens opportunities to study water homeostasis —and, by extension, molecular crowding— and its role in tumor biology and drug response across various experimental systems. It is currently being applied in a Bridge Project collaboration between Manalis and co-author Keith Ligon at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

This work has been supported in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

Kinase closed: Shutting down cancer's escape routes

MIT News

March 26, 2026

Forest White and Cameron Flower PhD ’24 have uncovered why drugs that inhibit tyrosine kinase signaling pathways, such as imatinib (Gleevec), fail in some patients.  By analyzing tumor phosphoproteomics, the White Lab team found that many resistant cells are intrinsically wired to resist tyrosine kinase inhibitors: backup signaling networks are already running to support vital functions such as cell growth and division, even when tyrosine kinase inhibitors work as intended. 

As reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers overcame this resistance in cell models by pairing a tyrosine kinase inhibitor with a drug that targets the backup pathway—an approach currently in clinical trials for lung cancer. 

“We are really excited to watch these clinical trials and to see how well patients do on these combinations. And I really think there’s a future for using tyrosine phosphoproteomics to guide this clinical decision-making,” White says. The research was funded in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine.
 

Enduring passion for precision oncology

MIT News

March 25, 2026

A Goldwater Scholar and triathlete, senior Alex Tang balances a love of endurance sports and medical journalism with cutting-edge cancer research. His time as a student with Tyler Jacks and Michael Hemann studying combined immunotherapy and targeted therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer helped inspire his goal to advance precision oncology as a physician-scientist.

Matt Jones named Cancer Grand Challenges Future Leader

Cancer Grand Challenges

March 20, 2026

Matt Jones has been named a Cancer Grand Challenges Future Leader, part of a global initiative to tackle cancer’s hardest problems. His research uses single-cell and lineage-tracing tools to study tumor evolution. “By reconstructing cancer’s history,” he explains, researchers can better anticipate disease progression and identify new opportunities for intervention.

KI stars shine bright in Cancer Grand Challenges

Whitehead Institute

March 9, 2026

The Koch Institute made a brilliant showing in the latest round of Cancer Grand Challenges, which brings together the world’s top scientists and clinicians across diverse disciplines to accelerate progress against cancer.Stefani Spranger was a finalist for the DARK-MATTERS team and Jonathan Weismann joins the ILLUMINE team, both aiming to transform new insights into the largely unexplored “dark proteome” into cancer therapies.