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MIT Advocacy in Action at the AACR’s 2025 Hill Day

Koch Institute

May 29, 2025

MIT Koch Institute postdoc Meaghan McGeary traveled to Washington, DC to advocate for increased federal funding for cancer research as part of the annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Hill Day. Joining other early-career scientists in a mission to make more than 50 congressional visits in a single day, she shared her experiences with policymakers, emphasizing the importance of stable research funding.  

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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. 

Hungry for Research

MIT News

August 30, 2018

Although it has been 100 years since scientists first discovered that cancer cells metabolize nutrients differently than most normal cells, cancer metabolism research has been a relatively neglected field of research—until recently. A new profile from MIT News tells how KI Associate Director and MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine member Matthew Vander Heiden helped bring new life to the field with his appetite for more insight into how cancer cells alter their metabolism. At the beginning of grad school, Vander Heiden thought he would go into medicine, but in studying Bcl-x, an apoptosis regulator found in the membranes of mitochondria, he realized “that we don’t understand cell metabolism anywhere near as well as we thought we did, and someone should really study this.” 

Culture Shock

MIT News

August 27, 2018

Let's dish about chromosomes, shall we? Researchers in the Amon Lab have uncovered evidence that cells dividing in culture or in the absence of tissue architecture have significantly higher levels of chromosome mis-segregation (a condition known as aneuploidy) than those that divide within their native environments. Their findings, published in Cell and profiled by HHMI, suggest that the hallmark aneuploidy found in more than 90% of solid human tumors may be influenced by disrupted tissue architecture, independent of gene expression and mutations, and has important implications for the widespread practice of studying cells in a dish. See this work in the KI Public Galleries.

Lead author and 2014 KI Images Award winner Kristin Knouse just won a 2018 NIH Director's Early Independence Award. Congratulations!

Set and Spike!

MIT News

August 10, 2018

A new two-step approach to treating gliomas could help clinicians set the ball by quickly identifying mutations, then drive it home by delivering mutation-targeted treatment, all during the course of tumor removal surgery. In a study published in PNAS, a team of researchers including KI research affiliate Giovanni Traverso and David H. Koch Institute Professor Robert Langer developed both a 30-minute test for IDH1/2 mutations, found in 20 to 25 percent of all gliomas, and microparticles that bypass the blood-brain barrier by implantation directly into the brain. The researchers are now developing tests for other common brain tumor mutations, and expect their approach to be applicable to tumors in other parts of the body. 

A Little "Light" Cancer Detection

Medium

August 8, 2018

She may not consider herself a "real biologist" but KI and Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine member Angela Belcher, recently nominated for XConomy's Innovation at the Intersection Award, is making real progress in the fight against ovarian cancer. NEO.LIFE explores how she is engineering viruses to bind to tumor cells and carbon nanotubes, with the goal of improving tumor-removal surgery cancer patient prognosis. 

Summer Backpacking with the Irvine Lab

MIT News

July 11, 2018

The Irvine Lab has summer backpacking down to a T (cell). New work, published in Nature Biotechnology, describes how this Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine team is using nanoparticle "backpacks" to improve efficacy and lower toxicity of adoptive T cell therapy against solid tumors. Their latest particles can carry 100-fold more drug than their predecessors and will release their cargo only when the immune cells carrying them reach the tumor and become activated. Senior author and principal investigator Darrell Irvine is a co-founder of startup company Torque, which is preparing to blaze a trail into the clinic later this year.

Slow Down, You Grow Too Fast

MIT News

July 2, 2018

Researchers in the laboratory of KI associate director and MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine member Matthew Vander Heiden are looking at aspartate as a limiting nutrient for cancer cells and feeling groovy. Their latest paper, published in Nature Cell Biology and further covered in Nature News & Views, explains how and why this amino acid is important for cell proliferation and argues that targeting aspartate production may reduce the growth of some tumors. 

The Unstoppable Nancy Hopkins

MIT News

June 25, 2018

KI member and MIT Professor Emerita Nancy Hopkins may be officially retired, but she is not slowing down. After co-authoing a review of the molecular mechanisms of the preventable causes of cancer in the United States for Genes & Development, she sat down with MIT News to share her perspective on the impact and potential of cancer prevention. On September 5, Hopkins will be honored with the 2018 Xconomy Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to genetics, cancer research, and gender equity in science.

Weight For It

MIT News

June 22, 2018

The KI's Vander Heiden Lab, in collaboration with researchers and clinicians at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is exploring the connections between pancreatic cancer and weight loss. As seen in Nature, the team looked at tissue wasting mechanisms in mice with early stage tumors and found that loss of pancreatic digestive enzymes can contribute to early weight loss in pancreatic cancer. They also examined blood samples and clinical data from more than 700 pancreatic cancer patients, determining that tissue loss does not necessarily correlate with lower survival rates and suggesting that detecting such tissue loss could lead to earlier diagnosis. The work was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine. Get the breakdown from MIT News, Nature News & Views, and STAT.

Pushing BBBoundaries, Crossing BBBarriers

MIT News

June 4, 2018

Blood brain barrier getting in the way of brain cancer treatment? Na-no problem! A collaborative effort between the laboratories of Paula Hammond, a David H. Koch Professor in Engineering and head of MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, Michael Yaffe, the David H. Koch Professor of Science and director of MIT's Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and former Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Clinical Investigator Scott Floyd has yielded a layered nanoparticle coated with a protein known as transferrin that can pass through the blood brain barrier to deliver a targeted one-two punch to glioblastoma tumor cells. Mice treated with these transferrin-coated nanoparticles survived for twice as long as mice that received other treatments. The work is described in Nature Communications and was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, a KI Quinquennial Cancer Research Fellowship, and the Bridge Project.