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Tardi-grade A science

MIT News

February 26, 2025

About 60 percent of cancer patients in the U.S. receive radiation therapy, which can have severe side effects. In a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team led by Giovanni Traverso discovered that a protein from tardigrades (microscopic "water bears") can protect human cells from radiation damage, minimizing treatment side effects.

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KI Alum Leads Testing in NIH Study

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

April 13, 2020

The National Institutes of Health launched an at-home blood collection effort to determine how many adults in the United States without a confirmed history of SARS-CoV-2 infection have antibodies to the virus. KI alum Kaitlyn Sadtler, now chief of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering’s Section for Immunoengineering, is the study testing lead.

Fate to the Clinic

Fate Therapeutics

April 9, 2020

Fate Therapeutics, founded by Rudolf Jaenisch, began its first in-human Phase 1 clinical trial, treating its first patient with FT596, a natural killer cell-based cancer immunotherapy engineered using the company’s induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) platform. They also announced a collaboration with Janssen Biotech, Inc. to further develop additional off-the-shelf iPSC-derived cell-based immunotherapies.

KI Labs Net Success in STAT Madness

STAT News

April 6, 2020

STAT Madness was aglow with excitement for the Belcher Lab’s SWIFTI fluorescent imaging system, which allows surgeons to find and remove tiny ovarian cancer tumors. Their bacteriophage-nanotube system won 70% of a record-setting 699,315 votes in the final round; however, it is the 40% improvement in survival in preclinical models that the team is most proud of. “We’re working on a problem that we feel very, very passionately about,” says Belcher. With a near-infrared eye on early detection as well, and a newly granted patent in hand, the team is courting a real slam dunk for ovarian cancer patients.

Cheers also to the Wittrup Lab, which made it to Round 3 with a “Velcro Vaccine” that binds cancer-killing cytokines to collagen inside tumors, preventing damage to healthy tissue. All in all, that's full court impressive!

Prioritizing Personal Protection

MIT News

March 31, 2020

In addition to serving as faculty lead on a campus-wide donation effort to provide area hospitals and health care workers with personal protective equipment for the frontline COVID-19 response, Elazer Edelman partnered with MIT mechanical engineering professor Martin Culpepper to design a low-cost, disposable face shield for mass production.

Peptides That Bind

MIT News

March 27, 2020

A team led by Brad Pentelute has developed a drug candidate that may block the novel coronavirus’s access to human cells. In a study available on bioRxiv, researchers designed and synthesized a peptide that binds to a region of a viral spike protein thought to be the “key” to entry.

Biotechs Join the Fray with RNA

MIT News

March 26, 2020

MIT-affiliated companies are forging ahead with COVID-19 related efforts, including Moderna Therapeutics, co-founded by Robert Langer, and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, co-founded by Phillip Sharp.

Moderna began human trials of its messenger RNA (mRNA) based COVID-19 vaccine just 65 days after the virus was first sequenced. mRNA holds the key to Moderna’s record-breaking turnaround, according to Daniel Anderson, as it allows for speedier identification of new sequences and development of vaccines compared to traditional vaccines based on viral proteins.

Alnylam’s partnership with Vir Biotechnology will now include developing therapeutics for coronavirus infections, including COVID-19. The collaboration will combine Alnylam’s recent advances in delivering its RNAi technology to the lungs with Vir’s infectious disease capabilities to identify and develop drug candidates.

Serving a Repurpose

MIT News

March 24, 2020

David H. Koch Professor of Science and intensivist/trauma surgeon Michael Yaffe began trials to repurpose a drug used to treat stroke and heart attack for patients with coronavirus. Tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, breaks up blood clots, which data from China and Italy indicate contributed to respiratory failure. Yaffe, who is helping to organize the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s COVID-19 treatment efforts, is testing tPA in critically ill COVID-19 patients on ventilators in Boston, New York, and Colorado hospitals.

A report published in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery suggests the approach has particular promise in cases where patients are not responding to maximum support with a ventilator or where ventilators are unavailable, potentially even preventing their need. He and his colleagues have published an initial case series with encouraging results, although larger studies are needed to determine how best to use this treatment.

Out of Many, One

MIT Koch Institute

March 24, 2020

Torque Therapeutics, which has been readying the Irvine Lab’s T-cell nanoparticle backpacks for market, has merged with Cogen Therapeutics, which has harnessed the expertise of the Birnbaum and Shalek Labs in developing a platform to identify all of an individual’s T-cell receptor and corresponding antigens. Newly-formed Repertoire Immune Medicines is armed with complementary analysis and targeting technologies—both of which received early support from the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program—and will deploy them for cancer immunotherapy.

Inventional WISDM

MIT News

March 24, 2020

KI postdoc Ritu Raman spoke with the MIT Innnovation Initiative about her STEM journey, MIT "hustlers," and her vision for the Women in Innovation and STEM Database at MIT. Originally designed to increase visibility of women in STEM, the newly relaunched platform also promotes collaboration and rapid innovation.

Enter Entrepreneurship

Chemical & Engineering News

March 20, 2020

“Nobody ever got anywhere by listening to no," says Chemical & Engineering News about their 2020 Trailblazers. Included on the list are Koch Institute member Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering and head of MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder, chairperson, and managing director of Biocon and longtime friend of the Koch Institute. Read their stories to discover how they catalyzed their academic pursuits into top-notch entrepreneurship.