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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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Showing 431–440 of 532 stories

Spectrum of Opportunity

MIT Spectrum

March 11, 2019

In an MIT Spectrum profile, KI faculty member Stefani Spranger talks about the advantages and challenges of building a lab at the forefront of cancer immunotherapy research. Like many new labs, Spranger's interdisciplinary team has the opportunity to explore a range of investigative approaches, but hasn't yet had time to build up funding, name recognition, and other resources to support them in their work. That's where an endowed professorship, such as Spranger's appointment last year as the Howard S. (1953) and Linda B. Stern Career Development Professor, can make a big difference. 

All That and a Bag of MicroColonyChips

MIT News

March 9, 2019

Measuring the toxic effects that chemical compounds have on cells is critical for developing cancer drugs and in fields like environmental regulation. The current gold-standard cell toxicity test, the colony formation assay, is time-consuming and labor intensive, while quicker tests sacrifice accuracy and sensitivity. The MicroColonyChip retains the sensitivity of the colony formation assay, but is fast and fully automated, delivering data in days rather than weeks. The chip was recently developed by the Engelward laboratory, in part using code developed by KI faculty member Sangeeta Bhatia and former KI postdoc and Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellow David K. Wood. The technology, described in Cell Reports, could help researchers identify and evaluate new drugs faster, advance personalized medicine applications, and support regulatory use. Leona Samson, KI faculty member emerita, also contributed to the work. 

Better Mammography through AI

New York Times

March 9, 2019

Regina Barzilay's work using AI algorithms for early detection of breast cancer was highlighted in a New York Times feature about technology and health care. With current diagnostic tools, it is difficult to determine if a suspicious lesion seen in a mammogram is high risk, benign or malignant, leading to false positive results that then lead to unnecessary biopsies and surgeries for thousands of women annually. Barzilay's system, now in use at MGH, uses machine learning to detect similarities between a patient’s breast and a database of 70,000 images for which the malignant or benign outcome was known. You can hear Barzilay talk about her work in interviews with WBUR and CNBC. Barzilay co-chairs the KI's summer symposium about machine learning and cancer on June 14.

Tortoises All the Way Down

New York Times

February 20, 2019

A new oral insulin delivery capsule could one day replace daily injections for people with type 1 diabetes. Developed by a team led by KI faculty member Robert Langer and longtime collaborator Giovanni Traverso, the capsule, made of stainless steel and biodegradable polymer components, injects a small needle made of compressed insulin into the stomach wall before passing harmlessly through the digestive system. To make sure that the pill lands in the correct orientation to the stomach wall, the researchers developed new device designs that were inspired by the shape of the leopard tortoise, whose angled shell ensures it can roll back on its feet no matter how it falls. In a study published in Science, researchers showed that the capsule could deliver other protein drugs that, like insulin, are too large or delicate to be absorbed undamaged by the digestive system. The team is working with Novo Nordisk to refine the technology and optimize its manufacturing process.

Lunch Lines of Inquiry

MIT News

February 6, 2019

Thanks to a fortuitous connection in the Koch Café, it is now possible to longitudinally study cancer progression and treatment response in genetically engineered mouse models using circulating tumor cells. A new microfluidic platform, described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combines expertise from the Manalis, Jacks, Shalek, and Vander Heiden Lab to capture and genomically profile these vanishingly rare cells from a single awake mouse without depleting the animal’s limited blood supply. 

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.