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Artifacts from a half century of cancer research

MIT Koch Institute

November 21, 2024

Throughout 2024, the Koch Institute has celebrated 50 years of MIT’s cancer research program and the individuals who have shaped its journey. In honor of this milestone anniversary year, the Koch Institute celebrated the opening of a new exhibition: Object Lessons: Celebrating 50 Years of Cancer Research at MIT in 10 Items. Object Lessons invites the public to explore significant artifacts—from one of the earliest PCR machines, developed in the lab of Nobel laureate H. Robert Horvitz, to Greta, a groundbreaking zebrafish from the lab of Professor Nancy Hopkins—in the half century of discoveries and advancements that have positioned MIT at the forefront of the fight against cancer.  

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Fighting Health Disparities with Nanomedicine

MIT Koch Institute

August 7, 2021

Congratulations to Institute Professor and KI member Paula Hammond, the inaugural recipient of the Black in Cancer Distinguished Investigator Award. Established through a partnership between Black in Cancer and the Emerald Foundation in response to racial abuse experienced by Black birdwatcher Chris Cooper in Central Park last year, this award recognizes Black excellence in cancer research and medicine. With this support, Hammond will apply her signature layer-by-layer technology—variations on which were recently featured in National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal—to engineer a nanoscale delivery system that direct a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy to ovarian cancer cells and the surrounding tumor microenvironment. Although the incidence rate of high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) is higher in white than black women, the mortality rate is higher for black women, making Hammond's approach a powerful tool for combating serious health disparities.

Three Strikes Against Pancreatic Cancer

MIT News

August 5, 2021

Jacks Lab investigations published in Cancer Cell have identified a promising three-drug combination to improve pancreatic tumors’ response to immunotherapy. The team now seeks to analyze which tumors will respond best to this approach and is working with the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research and two pharmaceutical companies to test the combination therapy in clinical trials.

Inside Outreach

American Society for Cell Biology

August 2, 2021

KI outreach manager Erika Reinfeld sat down with KI postdoc and American Society for Cell Biology representative Tim Fessenden to discuss science outreach before and after Covid. Reflecting on the nature of online vs. in-person events, tours, and presentations, the conversation examined the pandemic’s impact on access, equity, and opportunity, as well as strategies for connecting STEM topics to people’s everyday experiences.
 

One Step at a Time

American Association for Cancer Research

July 27, 2021

Cancer metabolism pioneer Matthew Vander Heiden didn't set out to be a pioneer; he just wanted to understand how mitochondria worked. However, one question led to another and he soon found himself revisiting fundamental questions about cell metabolism and applying his discoveries to cancer biology. Now, as director of the Koch Institute, Vander Heiden continues to catalyze discoveries and interactions across the cancer research field.

Suono Bio Makes Waves

MIT News

July 27, 2021

KI startup Suono Bio is teaching an old technology new tricks. Beginning with treatment for ulcerative colitis, the team is using ultrasound waves to enhance drug delivery and promote localized absorption into the GI tract. Such an approach could one day make cancer therapy more precise and effective.

Staking Out Cancer

MIT News

July 23, 2021

Bhatia Lab engineers, in collaboration with biologists in the Gertler Lab, have created diagnostic nanoparticles that detect cancer cells and pinpoint their location anywhere in the body. A study published in Nature Materials tracked the progression and spread of metastatic colon cancer in mouse models before and after chemotherapy, suggesting that the platform could be used to diagnose and monitor cancer, as well as evaluate treatment response. The team is optimistic about the new platform's eventual use as a routine screening tool in annual health exams.

This project was supported in part by the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and a KI Quinquennial Cancer Research Fellowship, with earlier work supported by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program.

Moles Meet Machine Learning

Technology Review

July 22, 2021

KI member Regina Barzilay continues her work to improve early cancer detection through machine learning algorithms. In an article published in Science Translational Medicine, Barzilay and colleagues describe the training and use of a deep convolutional neural network to compare markings on patients' skin to identify signs of pre-cancerous lesions.

mRNA Vaccines Beyond Covid

National Geographic

July 21, 2021

Covid-19 has brought substantial attention to the use of messenger RNA, or mRNA, as a tool for training the body to fight disease. KI member Daniel Anderson speaks with National Geographic about the application of this technology in cancer therapy—a longstanding research interest in his lab. His message? Therapeutic mRNA vaccines delivered via nanoparticles could offer great flexibility in helping the immune system identify and attack tumor cells across a wide range of cancer types.

Promoter Sequence

MIT Koch Institute

July 1, 2021

Congratulations to Scott Manalis, Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering and Associate Department Head Biological Engineering, who has been appointed a David H. Koch Professor of Engineering. Manalis is the second person to hold the David H. Koch (1962) Inaugural Chair in Engineering; he succeeds Paula Hammond, who was recently named an Institute Professor, the highest honor bestowed on MIT faculty members. Though the timing is coincidental, it is fitting that the transition of this chair—created for the dedication of the Koch Institute in 2011—should take place during our anniversary year.

The KI is also pleased to congratulate several more faculty members on their promotions and new appointments: Alex Shalek has been granted tenure in the Department of Chemistry. Michael Birnbaum has been promoted to associate professor in the Department of Biological Engineering and Bradley Pentelute to full professor in the Department of Chemistry. In addition to his recent promotion to full professor, Matthew Vander Heiden has been appointed as the Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology.

Parsing Paraffin-Embedded Tissue Samples

Cancer Research

July 1, 2021

By combining bench and computational methods, the White Lab has created powerful techniques for analyzing cell signaling processes and identifying potential cancer therapy targets and drug combinations. Yet these techniques often require more tissue than is available in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples, one of the most widely available forms of preserved biopsy and tumor tissue. However, the researchers have developed an approach, published in Cancer Research, that collects data from FFPE samples with the same sensitivity as from less common, but larger frozen samples. With Mayo Clinic collaborators, the team was also able to identify patient-specific, cancer-driving signaling molecules in FFPE samples of breast and lung tumors. These findings suggest that this method can provide direct translational insight from analysis of FFPE specimens, and open huge repositories of patient samples to further study.