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Viktor Adalsteinsson

KI alum Viktor Adalsteinsson develops liquid biopsies to detect cancer

Slice of MIT

March 6, 2024

Cancer patients who undergo surgery are often left with a frightening question: Did the surgeons get all the cancerous cells? No one wants a recurrence of disease, but additional treatments such as radiation or chemotherapy have significant side effects. That’s why Viktor Adalsteinsson PhD ’15 has been developing tools to support better-informed treatment decisions: so-called “liquid biopsies” that can detect the presence of cancer from a simple blood test.

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Headphone Jacks

Transnetyx

February 6, 2019

Tyler Jacks sat down with Transnetyx founder and CEO Bob Bean to share his path to cancer research and his insights into building a career in science, the power of mentorship, and putting together a great lab. Listen in at the Highly Cited podcast.

In Fighting Shape

MIT News

December 19, 2018

Researchers in the laboratories of Scott Manalis and Alex Shalek have teamed up to test whether a cancer cell is fit enough to survive cancer treatment – and identify the weaknesses that may help clinicians knock drug-resistant cells out. The study, appearing in Genome Biology, combines the Shalek Lab's expertise in single-cell mRNA sequencing and a Manalis Lab device that measures the mass and growth rate of individual cells to investigate treatment of glioblastoma in collaboration with Keith Ligon's lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. By overlapping cell measurements from the device and gene expression measurements associated with cellular responses to an experimental drug known as an MDM2 inhibitor, the team identified populations of resistant glioblastoma cells and gained new insights into how to target these cells more efficiently. 

AI Comes to the Cancer Clinic

New York Times

November 20, 2018

Regina Barzilay makes a splash in The New York Times discussing the AI technologies that she hopes will transform the cancer clinic with George Church, Jennifer Egan, Catherine Mohr and Siddhartha Mukherjee. MIT News profiled one such technology, an AI model that uses deep learning to identify dense breast tissue in mammograms. The convolutional neural network-based model—the first of its kind to be successfully used in a clinic on real patients—evaluated mammograms as reliably as expert radiologists, according to the study published in Radiology.

Charting New Heights in Kendall Square

MIT Spectrum

November 20, 2018

Examining Kendall Square's transformation from “parking lots and gravel pits” to the epicenter of a biotech boom-town, Spectrum spoke with KI member and Kronos Bio founder Angela Koehler about her own journey from academia to industry. Her laboratory’s signature small molecule microarray technology uses chemical probes to screen for compounds that can fight back against some of the most recalcitrant targets in oncology. Kronos Bio stands poised to turn these “hits” into real blockbusters—taking both cancer research and Kendall Square by storm.

Seeking Stem

MIT News

November 20, 2018

In October, the Koch Institute highlighted the launch of the MIT Stem Cell Initiative, a deep dive into the biology of normal adult stem cells and their malignant counterparts, cancer stem cells. With support from Fondation MIT, a Swiss philanthropic organization, the initiative seeks to identify, purify, and propagate these relatively rare and elusive cells. Doing so will allow researchers to better understand their biology and learn how to utilize them more effectively in regenerative medicine applications and to target them in cancer.

Congratulations, 2018 Karches Prize Winners

MIT Koch Institute

November 20, 2018

The KI is proud to congratulate the first annual Peter Karches Mentorship Prize winners: Shelby Doyle, Kim Nguyen, Peter Westcott, and Amanda Whipple. Each year, the prize will be awarded to up to four postdocs or graduate students in recognition of the important role trainees play in the mentorship of undergraduate students working in KI laboratories.

Expand and Contract: SQZ Biotech Advances Immunotherapy

MIT News

November 15, 2018

SQZ Biotech, whose initial application of cell-squeezing technology to enhance production of antigen presenting cells for immunotherapy was a KI Frontier Research Program spin-out, recently announced the expansion of its partnership with Roche Pharmaceuticals. The combination of the startup's “CellSqueeze” microfluidic device and Roche's clinical oncology expertise will accelerate the development of cell-based immunotherapies for cancer, the first of which is expected to enter clinical trials in mid-2019. A recent paper in PNAS compares the use of cell squeezing to electroporation for intracellular delivery of immune engineering agents. SQZ CEO and former KI postdoc Armon Sharei spoke with MIT News about the goals and history of the company's groundbreaking technology.

Angelika Amon Wins 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

MIT News

October 17, 2018

The Koch Institute is proud to congratulate Angelika Amon, Kathleen and Curtis Marble Professor in Cancer Research, on winning the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Amon’s trailblazing work provided critical insights into the molecular mechanisms governing chromosome segregation and mis-segregation as well as the impact of aneuploidy on normal cells and tumor formation. Amon accepted the award at a ceremony hosted by Pierce Brosnan in November at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Read more at the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, or watch Amon's red carpet interview. We are also pleased to add that Amon was named the recipient of the 2018 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, likewise for her work on chromosome segregation. The prize is given annually to honor and recognize a woman scientist of national reputation who has a stellar record of research accomplishments and is known for her mentorship of women in science. Amon will accept her award and deliver the Flexner Discovery Lecture at Vanderbilt University on Thursday, January 31, 2019.

Of Mice and Mentorship

MIT News

October 11, 2018

From the humble beginnings of the KPC mouse model to cutting-edge developments in gene editing and immunology, the Jacks Lab has always been a place where innovation happens. On September 21, the Lustgarten Foundation honored the lab with a significant investment to advance several key areas of pancreatic cancer research and promote collaboration across MIT. The newly dedicated Lustgarten Laboratory for Pancreatic Cancer Research at MIT will focus on understanding the immunological factors and genetic events that contribute to pancreatic tumors' development, on using organoids and single cell analysis to test new strategies for early detection and treatment, and on bringing new researchers into the fold. 

Speedy Delivery

MIT News

October 4, 2018

It's a beautiful day in the Love Lab, where researchers have developed a new way to rapidly manufacture small quantities of biopharmaceuticals on demand. The modular system is small enough to fit on a lab bench, switches easily between producing different drugs, and can make a batch of a drug in a few days. The system will have important applications not just for precision medicine, but also for treating rare diseases, responding to disease outbreaks such as Ebola, and supplying areas that lack large-scale drug manufacturing facilities. In a study published in Nature Biotechnology and featured in Nature Highlights and the NIH Director's Blog, the Love Lab demonstrated the system's capacity to produce clinical-grade therapeutics by producing three different drugs, human growth hormone and cancer medicines interferon alpha 2b and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor.