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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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Stem Cells Loom Large as Aging Factor

MIT News

November 17, 2021

New research from the Amon Lab suggests that size is an important factor in cellular aging. The study, supported in part by the MIT Stem Cell Initiative and published in Science Advances, showed that blood stem cells grow larger as they age, and that as they grow in size, they become less able to generate new blood cells.

Fundamentally Curious

MIT Koch Institute

November 11, 2021

“The best science comes from those who are fundamentally curious.” So reads new lettering in the west wing of the Koch Institute Public Galleries, alongside a dedicated plaque celebrating the life and work of Angelika Amon. The unveiling ceremony, attended by Angelika’s family and close colleagues, also debuted a new exhibit celebrating MIT’s rich legacy of discovery science—an endeavor near and dear to Angelika’s heart—and announced the creation of the Amon Young Scientist Award to support exchange of ideas between MIT and international researchers.

Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research $25M gift to accelerate cancer research

MIT Koch Institute

November 11, 2021

The Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research has pledged $25 million to the Bridge Project, a collaboration between the Koch Institute and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC). Together with matching gifts to be raised by MIT and DF/HCC, these funds will support projects near or already in the clinic, particularly those focusing on traditionally challenging classes of cancer drug targets or on more conventional targets found in rarer forms of cancer.

Stem Cells and Colon Cancer

Spectrum MIT

November 10, 2021

MIT Stem Cell Initiative investigators Ömer Yilmaz and Alex Shalek are investigating the impacts of high-fat diets on intestinal stem cells. Applying Shalek’s single-cell sequencing tools to three-dimensional colon tumor models called organoids developed in the Yilmaz Lab, their teams seek to understand how changes induced by high-fat diets in these stem cells can lead to cancer. The work of the MIT Stem Cell Initiative is supported by Fondation MIT.

Modeling the Mechanisms of Metastasis

MIT News

November 8, 2021

A team co-led by Roger Kamm has received a $7.8 million, five-year U54 grant to join National Institutes of Health’s inaugural group of Metastasis Research Network Centers. The team will study how metastasizing tumor cells adapt to mechanical stresses, as well as how these stressors impact cell fate, including cell death, dormancy, or proliferation.

Introducing the 2021-2022 Convergence Scholars

MIT Koch Institute

November 5, 2021

The Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine are pleased to announce the 2021-2022 class of Convergence Scholars.  CSP Scholars receive training, mentors, insights, and inroads into careers in academia, industry, health care, the policy arena, and federal research or regulatory agencies.

Secret Gardener

Boston Globe

November 5, 2021

Ever since a flower box display for the Sean Collier Memorial was moved into the Koch Institute Public Galleries, arrangements of plants and decorations with themes ranging from dinosaurs to holiday cheer have appeared every month. The Boston Globe reveals the creative gardener to be Kathy Cormier, who heads the Hope Babette Tang (1983) Histology Facility within the Robert A. Swanson (1969) Biotechnology Center. 

A Checkup for Checkpoint Blockade

MIT News

November 2, 2021

Why do some tumors fail to respond to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy? New research by the Spranger Lab, in collaboration with the Love and Wittrup Labs, suggests that non-responsive T cells may be dysfunctional due to differences in cytokine signaling during T cell activation in the tumor-draining lymph node. Their findings, published in Science Immunology, suggest that cytokine therapy could improve the tumors' response to ICB.

Shifting the Conversation Around Diet and Cancer

MIT News

October 26, 2021

Vander Heiden Lab researchers are applying new knowledge about cancer cell metabolism to better understand how low carbohydrate diets affect tumor development. By comparing a calorically restricted diet and a ketogenic diet in mouse models, the study found that the reduced availability of fatty acids played a major role in limiting tumor growth. These findings, published in Nature, do not recommend a particular diet, but rather, urge further investigation to determine how dietary interventions might be combined with existing or emerging drugs to advance patient care.

The work was supported in part by the Emerald Foundation, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

Adding Injury to Create Immunogenicity

MIT News

October 25, 2021

The Yaffe Lab, in collaboration with the Irvine Lab, is looking at novel ways to combine chemotherapy and radiotherapy with immunotherapy for more effective cancer treatment. In a study appearing in Science Signaling, tumor cells from mice were treated with DNA-damaging chemotherapy and re-injected back into the tumors before administering immune checkpoint blockade therapy.

Current conventions suggest that molecules released by dead or dying tumor cells can enhance immune cell response—a phenomenon known as immunogenic cell death—but here the researchers found that signals released by the still-living damaged cells were the ones inducing the greater immune response. This new approach, dubbed "immunogenic cell injury," could offer a viable treatment strategy for patients whose tumors have not previously responded to immunotherapy. The team will continue to test their approach using different drugs, dosages, and tumor types.

This work was funded in part by the Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellowship, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and the Charles and Marjorie Holloway Foundation.