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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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Showing 51–60 of 656 stories

Balancing game for brain cancer treatment

Eureka Alert

February 26, 2025

A collaborative study creates a detailed picture of immune programs in important brain tumor cells and how their relative expression can predict immunotherapy response and overall survival. The study, published in Nature and supported by the Ludwig Centers of MIT and Harvard, and McGill University, showed that dexamethasone, commonly prescribed to brain cancer patients to reduce swelling, suppresses the immune system for weeks after administration and can inhibit immune activity and immunotherapy response.

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.

Solving the puzzle of immune evasion

MIT News

February 26, 2025

Stefani Spranger’s work is focused on uncovering why some tumors evade the immune system’s attack. For example, her latest research, published in Cancer Immunology Research, reveals that lung cancer cells expressing SOX2 can block CD8+ T cells, undermining checkpoint blockade therapy. “By understanding these resistance mechanisms, we can develop smarter immunotherapies to outmaneuver cancer,” says Spranger.

AI in Action 

Forbes

February 26, 2025

Assessing promise versus prudence for AI in healthcare, Forbes highlighted Regina Barzilay's research showing AI can reliably improve breast cancer detection rates by 20% without increasing false positives. In a recent interview with Cancer Network, Barzilay discussed how AI’s proven ability to improve cancer detection rates in both breast and lung cancer screening may eventually push for updates to outdated protocols.

Koehler to lead MIT HEALS

MIT Office of the President

February 21, 2025

Congratulations to Angela Koehler on being named director of the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS). MIT HEALS was established last year to bring together researchers from across the Institute to innovate new solutions to urgent challenges in health care. Koehler will be joined by two associate directors: Department of Biology professor Iain Cheeseman and Department of Biological Engineering professor Katharina Ribbeck.

Splice of life

MIT News

February 20, 2025

The Burge lab has discovered a new type of control over RNA splicing, a process critical for gene expression. Appearing in a new Nature Communications paper, their study sheds light on how this control mechanism can go wrong—and serve as a potential therapeutic target—in acute myelogenous leukemias and other diseases.

Protein location prediction

MIT News

February 13, 2025

Inspired by AlphaFold, a groundbreaking tool for predicting protein structure, researchers led by Regina Barzilay and Richard Young developed ProtGPS, a machine learning model that predicts protein location based on the sequence of its amino acid components. In a Science study, the team demonstrated that ProtGPS can also predict how disease-related mutations change protein location as well as generate new protein designs targeted to a desired location.  

Seeing breast cancer in a new light

Microsoft News Network

February 4, 2025

Following FDA approval in 2024, Lumicell’s LumiSystem for real-time cancer detection is now commercially available in the U.S. Developed with early support from the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, it reveals residual cancer cells during surgery to enable precise and efficient correction, improve patient outcomes and reduce the need for additional treatments.  

All signs go at Auron

Auron Therapeutics

February 4, 2025

Auron Therapeutics, co-founded by Matt Vander Heiden, announced that the FDA has granted Fast Track designation to its therapeutic candidate, AUTX-703, paving the way for clinical development including a Phase 1 clinical trial in acute myelogenous leukemia set to open this year.    

A brief history of cancer immunotherapy

Genetic Engineering and Biotech News

February 3, 2025

Ankyra Therapeutics makes an appearance in GEN’s short overview of the long history of cancer immunotherapy. A Velcro-like protein, first developed in the labs of Dane Wittrup and former KI member Darrell Irvine, anchors immune-modulating cytokines within tumors, improving precision and minimizing side effects.