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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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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. 

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.