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A group of scholars in the Koch Institute Public Galleries

Introducing the 2024-2025 Convergence Scholars

MIT Koch Institute

November 20, 2024

The Koch Institute is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 class of Convergence Scholars. Founded in 2017, the program is designed to enhance the career development of aspiring independent scientists with diverse interests across academia, industry, science communication, and STEM outreach. This year's scholars are Amy Lee (Langer/Jaklenec Lab), Jose Ortiz (Yilmaz Lab), Meaghan McGeary (Jacks Lab), Ranjan Mishra (Weinberg Lab), Yuang Chen (Anderson Lab), and Zhengpeng (Jason) Wan (Kamm Lab).

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Showing 371–380 of 582 stories

Binders Keepers

Nature Communications

October 20, 2020

The Birnbaum Lab has developed a new platform that may help researchers better understand and predict how the immune system recognizes pathogens and cancerous cells. Described in Nature Communications, the platform identifies peptides able to bind class II major histocompatibility complexes (MHC-II), molecules that present protein fragments on cell surfaces. If CD4+ helper T cells recognize these complexes, they activate the immune response. The yeast-display-based approach has identified more unique MHC-II binders than comparable approaches, paving the way for improved accuracy of MHC-II binding prediction algorithms. The technology can be used to guide future selection of targets for CD4+ T cell recognition in cancer and beyond.

Á la CAR-T

Nature Biomedical Engineering

October 19, 2020

The Chen Lab has identified a promising target for CAR-T cell-based therapies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). CAR-T cell-based therapies have produced remarkable responses in patients with certain blood cancers, but translating that success to other cancers has proven challenging, due partly to off-target toxicity and the development of resistance to the treatment. In a study appearing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers circumvented both of these outcomes in cell lines and mouse models of AML by targeting a mutant form of the gene NPM1c that is only expressed in cancer cells. The Chen Lab will adapt this approach to target NPM1c using natural killer cells (CAR-NK), with support from the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Michael (1957) and Inara Erdei Fund and the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund.

SeqWell S3: Better Than the Original

MIT News

October 12, 2020

Shalek and Love Lab researchers have increased the resolution on their signature high-throughput single-cell RNA-sequencing platform using a simple molecular biology trick known as "second-strand synthesis." The new and improved Seq-Well S3, described in Immunity, provides a five- and tenfold increase in identification of genes and RNA transcripts, respectively, and was applied to characterize various inflammatory skin conditions. The team is also using the technology to profile cancer cells, supported in part by the Bridge Project.

Breaking Up Isn't Hard to Do

Nature Communications

October 8, 2020

Cell division may look like hard work, but a team led by the Manalis Lab and including the Vander Heiden and Yaffe Labs found that mitosis may take much less energy than expected. In a study appearing in Nature Communications, researchers measured the membrane potential of mitochondria (the powerhouses of the cell) at single-cell resolution and then, using an “electrical circuit” mathematical model, estimated that mitochondria produce ATP (the cell’s primary fuel) about half as quickly during mitosis than outside mitosis.

This study was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, the Lustgarten Foundation, and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

NIH Honors Transformative Potential

MIT News

October 6, 2020

Congratulations to Michael Birnbaum on receipt of a National Institutes of Health New Innovators Award for his work using peptide-MHC lentivirus display to identify repertoire-scale T cell antigens. Administered through the High Risk, High Reward program, the award celebrates highly innovative and unusually impactful research by extraordinarily creative early career scientists. Birnbaum, who joined the Koch Institute faculty in 2016, uses protein engineering, structural biology, and bioinformatics to understand and manipulate immune-cell recognition and signaling.

Rising Stars

Endpoints News

October 2, 2020

Endpoints named Kronos Bio as one of 11 most promising startups in biotech. Built on high-throughput screening techniques developed by MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine member Angela Koehler, the company takes aim at “undruggable” cancer targets. Skyhawk, which draws on the research and expertise of several KI members, also made the list.

Advancing AI in Medicine

MIT News

September 23, 2020

KI member Regina Barzilay is the first-ever winner of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity, a new $1 million prize to honor individuals whose work in the field has had a transformative impact on society. Barzilay is being recognized for her work building machine learning models to develop antibiotics and other drugs, and to detect and diagnose breast cancer at early stages. In 2019 she spoke at the Koch Institute’s with/in/sight lecture series about her collaboration with MGH’s Constance Lehmann to improve mammography through artificial intelligence and co-chaired the Koch Institute's annual summer symposium, on the integration of machine learning and cancer research. In addition to her own laboratory research, she is also working to make her diagnostic tools available for underprivileged populations around the world.

Cornering Cancer

Nature Communications

September 21, 2020

Koch Institute researchers are teaming up to put p53-mutated cancers in a corner by targeting multiple genes at once to create a new approach called “augmented synthetic lethality.” Mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene (present in most cancers) enable tumor cells to develop resistance to widely-used platinum-based chemotherapies. Building on previous work in the Yaffe Lab that identified MK2 as a synthetic lethal partner to p53, the group has now been able to further enhance the tumor-shrinking effects of platinum-based anti-cancer drugs by adding a new target, the gene XPA.  In the study, appearing in Nature Communications, Yaffe lab researchers used nanoplexes developed in the Hammond Lab to deliver MK2- and XPA-blocking siRNAs to tumors in mouse models of non-small cell lung cancer that were originally developed in the Jacks and Hemann Labs.

Campus Shuts Down, Nelson Steps Up

MIT Biology

August 28, 2020

Toni-Ann Nelson, an undergraduate researcher from Alcorn State University, has been working with MSRP-Bio and Jacks Lab graduate student Amanda Cruz to understand the genetic underpinnings of non-small cell lung cancer...in unexpectedly quantitative ways. Thanks to the MIT campus closure, Nelson has developed a new computational skillset that will help transform her lifelong passion for cancer research into new cancer biology pathways.

Rapid Transite Accelerates Computational Analysis

Cell Reports

August 25, 2020

Members of the Yaffe group have been developing computational methods to examine RNA-binding proteins as a class of molecules that might broadly be involved in how tumors respond to chemotherapy. In a Cell Reports paper, the researchers describe a computer program they developed called Transite, which systematically infers which RNA-binding proteins are influencing gene expression through changes in RNA stability and degradation. Transite is broadly available at Transite and has already been used to perform hundreds of analyses.

This work was supported in part by the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine and the Charles and Marjorie Holloway Foundation.