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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 511–520 of 532 stories

RNA Combination Therapy for Lung Cancer Offers Promise for Personalized Medicine

MIT News

August 14, 2014

Researchers in the Jacks, Anderson, and Langer Labs report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have successfully delivered nanoparticles carrying small RNA therapies in a clinically relevant mouse model of lung cancer to shrink tumors and slow their growth. They found that their nanoparticle treatment extended life just as well as a standard-care chemotherapy drug, and furthermore, that the combination therapy of the nanoparticles and the drug together prolonged life by about an additional 25 percent. “Small-RNA therapy holds great promise for cancer,” Jacks says. “It is widely appreciated that the major hurdle in this field is efficient delivery to solid tumors outside of the liver, and this work goes a long way in showing that this is achievable.”

Cancer Immunotherapy Gets Flashy

MIT Koch Institute

July 14, 2014

Pom-poms, foam fingers, umbrellas, T-shirts, whistles…all the ingredients the KI community needs to hack the immune system to fight cancer. On April 25, approximately 180 friends, colleagues, and strangers gathered to turn cutting-edge biotechnology into a larger-than-life battle behind the KI building as part of the annual Cambridge Science Festival. Documented with words and video, the third annual biology flash mob was a smashing success, educating students and adults alike about the promise of adoptive T cell transfer and cancer immunotherapy. Well, maybe not such a success for the redshirts, who, as cancer cells, suffered a rather humiliating defeat at the hands T cells' aforementioned pom-poms and foam fingers…but at least they had fun.

Langer Wins Kyoto Prize, Biotechnology Heritage Award

The Boston Globe

June 20, 2014

On June 20, the Inamori Foundation in Japan announced that Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, won the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology in the Biotechnology and Medical Technology field. The Kyoto Prize is presented annually to those who have made significant contributions to the “scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind.” Langer was specifically recognized as an interdisciplinary pioneer in the fields of medicine and engineering. He will receive his prize in Kyoto on Nov. 10. Later in the month, Langer also received the 2014 Biotechnology Heritage Award from the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the Biotechnology Industry Organization. This annual award honors an individual who has made significant contributions to the growth of biotechnology. "Bob is truly one of the great biotechnology pioneers," said Carsten Reinhardt, CHF's president and CEO, citing Langer’s contributions to tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and controlled drug-delivery systems.

Double Trouble for Aggressive Cancers

MIT News

May 8, 2014

KI researchers led by Paula Hammond, David H. Koch Professor of Engineering, and Michael Yaffe, the David H. Koch Professor of Science, have engineered new, “smart” nanoparticles that directly target tumor cells to deliver multiple drugs in a staggered, precisely-timed regimen.

In 2012, the Yaffe Lab showed that the timing of drug administration can make a great difference in the success of combination treatments. Yaffe’s team discovered that pre-treating tumor cells with erlotinib, a therapeutic that shuts down uncontrolled tumor growth, before administering a DNA-damaging agent called doxorubicin, is more effective than giving the two drugs simultaneously.

As part of efforts to adapt the findings for patient care, Yaffe enlisted the help of KI colleague Paula Hammond. Hammond and her team designed dozens of nanoparticles to carry Yaffe’s treatment and found that liposomes, small droplets covered in a fatty shell, were most effective. With the first drug, erlotnib, injected in the outer layer, and the second, doxorubicin, contained in the inner core, the liposomes dispatched treatment to the cells at ideal intervals as the particles broke down in the body. In the study, published in Science Signaling, this treatment was shown to effectively knock out triple-negative breast tumors and non-small-cell lung tumors in mouse models. The researchers hope to expand time-staggered treatment to other types of chemotherapy.

This work was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Fund for Cancer Research.

Three Companies: Sasisekharan Startups Please Crowd

MIT News

April 26, 2014

“It’s about the impact we can have on patient care,” says Ram Sasisekharan, KI faculty member and the Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology, about his biotech startups. The three companies, profiled in MIT News, combine cutting-edge bioengineering with entrepreneurial spirit and, like so many other enterprises coming out of KI laboratories, find new ways to apply academic research to real world problems. Sasisekharan’s 2006 startup, Cerulean, is one of a handful of companies using nanotechnology to treat cancer, while his latest venture, Visterra, has an eye toward global health. His first company, Momenta (originally Mimeon), transforms the sequencing of complex molecules into the development of powerful, efficient, low-cost therapeutics. All three reside within minutes of the KI and owe their success to what Sasisekharan calls a “melting pot of people, ideas, opportunities” and “the convergence of biology, analytics, computation, and engineering” within the MIT ecosystem.

Cima Develops a Sensor for Measuring Tumors’ Oxygen Levels

MIT News

April 21, 2014

A new sensor for measuring oxygen levels around tumors has been developed by researchers from the laboratory of KI faculty member and David H. Koch Professor in Engineering Michael Cima. The sensor, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is an injectable device made of silicone, which is picked up in MRI scans. The sensor is the first MRI contrast agent that can be left in the body for long periods of time, allowing for the collection of oxygen tension over several weeks. Given that cancer cells thrive without oxygen and tumors in low-oxygen environments are generally more aggressive and resistant to treatment, long-term monitoring of oxygen tension will provide new insights into tumor growth and could aid therapeutic choices and tracking of treatment response.

Triple Threat: A New Breed of Nanoparticles

MIT News

April 16, 2014

MIT chemists from the laboratory of Jeremiah Johnson and researchers from the group of KI faculty member and David H. Koch Professor in Engineering Paula Hammond have come together to develop a new method for building nanoparticles that carry the drugs cisplatin, doxorubicin, and camptothecin—three drugs that are often used in a combination treatment for ovarian cancer. In a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Johnson and colleagues demonstrated that the triple-threat nanoparticles could kill ovarian cancer cells more effectively than particles carrying only one or two drugs.

Instead of building a particle and then binding a drug, the new approach uses drug-loaded building blocks that can be attached to others in a very specific structure. The team is now working on four-drug particles with the goal of developing new treatment regimens that could better target cancer cells while avoiding the toxic side effects of traditional chemotherapy. “This is a new way to build the particles from the beginning,” Johnson said. “In principle, there’s no limitation on how many drugs you can add.”

Bhatia’s Paper-based Urine Test for Cancer, a Game Changer

MIT News

February 24, 2014

MIT engineers led by KI faculty member Sangeeta Bhatia have developed a simple, cheap, paper-strip urine test that can reveal the presence of cancer within minutes. The paper-based diagnostic, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can be performed on unprocessed samples without specialized equipment and can be modified to detect different types or stages of disease. This point-of-care, image-free test is a big leap forward in bringing cancer detection to settings with little medical infrastructure. In countries where more advanced diagnostics are available, it could provide an inexpensive alternative to imaging. The technology relies on nanoparticles that interact with tumor proteins called proteases, each of which releases hundreds of biomarkers detectable in a patient’s urine. In the original version of the technology, these biomarkers were detected using a highly specialized instrument called a mass spectrometer. Now, applying the same technology used in pregnancy tests, the researchers have adapted the particles so they can be analyzed on paper. The Bhatia Laboratory recently won a grant from MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation to develop a business plan for a startup to commercialize the technology and perform clinical trials to bring this diagnostic to patients. The research has been profiled in media outlets including The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, Boston Magazine, The Times of India, and The Indian Express, and was funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellowship, the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Cancer Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Irvine’s Albumin-targeted Vaccines Hitch a Ride to the Lymph Nodes to Boost Immunity

MIT News

February 16, 2014

Many vaccines, including those for influenza, polio, and measles, consist of a killed or disabled version of a virus. However, for certain diseases, this type of vaccine is ineffective, or just too risky. An alternative, safer approach is a vaccine made of small fragments of proteins produced by a disease-causing virus or bacterium. This has worked for some diseases, but in many cases these vaccines don’t provoke a strong enough response. Now a team of engineers from the Irvine Lab has developed a new way to deliver such vaccines directly to the lymph nodes, where huge populations of immune cells reside: These vaccines hitch a ride to the lymph nodes by latching on to the protein albumin, found in the bloodstream. In tests with mice, such vaccines produced very strong immune responses.

Hemann & Chen Combine Forces against Resistant Tumors

MIT News

January 30, 2014

KI faculty members Michael Hemann, the Eisen and Chang Career Development Associate Professor of Biology, and Jianzhu Chen, the Ivan R. Cottrell Professor of Immunology, have discovered a new treatment for drug-resistant tumors using a combination of existing drugs. In a study published in Cell, the KI team showed that the simultaneous administration of an antibody drug called alemtuzumab (which is FDA-approved for some cancers and in clinical trials for some forms of lymphoma) and cyclophosphamide (a drug that is often given to cancer patients) makes tumor cells more vulnerable to the antibody treatment. Cyclophosphamide stimulates the immune response in bone marrow, eliminating the reservoir of cancer cells that can produce new tumors after treatment and avoiding tumor recurrence. The researchers also reported good results by combining cyclophosphamide with rituximab, another antibody drug used to treat lymphoma and leukemia. They now plan to test cyclophosphamide with other types of antibody drugs for breast and prostate tumors. This research was funded by the MIT Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, the German Research Foundation, and the National Cancer Institute. First author and former KI postdoc Christian Pallasch plans to begin testing the alemtuzumab-cyclophosphamide treatment in lymphoma patients.