January Bulletin
Issue 64
Community Notices | News | Jobs | Funding | Events
Community Notices
January Seminar.
Save the date for the first Marble Center research seminar of 2022! The seminar is on Monday January 31st, 4-5pm (Zoom) with a research update by the Anderson Laboratory followed by a hot topic discussion by Dr. Sasan Jalili of the Irvine Lab. More details on the talks will be shared next week.
Please register here to receive the Zoom access information.
Prof. Darrell Irvine speaks at the upcoming HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine seminar
Join the HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine for a talk by Prof. Darrell Irvine on “Self-replicating RNA as a vector for vaccines and cancer immunotherapy,” this Tuesday January 25 at 3pm ET. The talk will be available on Zoom via this link.
The Engine's Blueprint program at MIT.
The Engine Blueprint is a nonresident program for graduate students, postdocs, and research scientists to explore the commercial opportunities of their scientific breakthroughs. The program is designed to give future Tough Tech leaders a chance to learn the entrepreneurial process from those who are living it, as well as provide a platform to crystallize the commercial potential of participants’ startup concepts. Spring 2022 program will be held from April 1st to April 29th.
Interested applicants can apply here by February 17th.
In the News
Method for delivering immune system-stimulating drugs may enhance cancer immunotherapy
(MIT News) Stimulating the body’s immune system to attack tumors is a promising way to treat cancer. Scientists are working on two complementary strategies to achieve that: taking off the brakes that tumors put on the immune system; and “stepping on the gas,” or delivering molecules that jumpstart immune cells.
However, when jumpstarting the immune system, researchers have to be careful not to overstimulate it, which can cause severe and potentially fatal side effects. A team of MIT researchers has now developed a new way to deliver a stimulatory molecule called IL-12 directly to tumors, avoiding the toxic effects that can occur when immunostimulatory drugs are given throughout the body. In a study of mice, this new treatment eliminated many tumors when delivered along with an FDA-approved drug that takes the brakes off the immune system.
“Even beyond this particular case of IL-12, which we really hope will have some impact, it’s a strategy that you could apply to any of these immunostimulatory drugs,” says Darrell Irvine, who is the Underwood-Prescott Professor with appointments in MIT’s departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering; an associate director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.. Read more…
This image depicts a tumor right after treatment with alum-bound IL12. The pink dye shows IL-12, and the yellow shows alum.
Top Life Sciences Startups to Watch in 2022
(Biospace) NextGen Bio “Class of 2022” is a list of up-and-coming life sciences companies in North America that recently launched. BioSpace looked at companies that launched between September 2020 and September 2021 with Series A funding. They were then weighted by several different categories and ranked in a cumulative fashion, based on the points awarded for each category. These categories were: finance, collaborations, pipeline, growth potential and innovation.
Built on research from Prof. Daniel Anderson’s lab at MIT, the oRNA technology is synthetic circular RNA that lack caps and tails and are always full-length. This structure enables them to potentially overcome production, delivery and performance challenges associated with RNA. Read more…
oRNA circular RNAs lack caps and tails and are always full-length, and are made by combining nature-driven insights with rational design. They are easily made, well-tolerated, and are engineered to express therapeutic proteins through original and proprietary mechanisms.
Board Diversity Increased in 2021. Some Ask What Took So Long.
Paula T. Hammond, who heads the chemical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was first sounded out about joining the board of a public company in 2020. (Credit: Lauren O’Neil for The New York Times)
(The New York Times) Paula T. Hammond is a pioneering chemical engineer who has researched cancer and other illnesses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for years. Her work, people in her field said, makes her a natural pick to sit on the board of a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company.
Yet it was only in 2020 that Dr. Hammond, who is Black and heads the chemical engineering department at her university, became a director of a publicly traded company. “That was my first time being approached to sit on a public board,” she said.
With their ability to steer companies’ biggest decisions and pick key executives, boards wield crucial power in American business and society. They have long been overwhelmingly white and male. Executives and recruiters have often complained that there aren’t enough women and nonwhite people qualified to be directors, a phenomenon often described as a “pipeline” problem. Read more…
Jobs
Postdoc Openings at the Carolina Cancer Nanotechnology Training Program.
The Carolina Cancer Nanotechnology Training Program is an NIH funded 24-36-month mentored training program offered at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a focus area of research on cancer nanotechnology. Join an elite group of scientists and innovators using multidisciplinary concepts and skills to improve cancer diagnosis and therapy based on tools and discoveries made in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Learn more…
Scientist, Delivery & formulation development, Sanofi.
Translate Bio, a Sanofi Company is a leading mRNA therapeutics company developing a new class of potentially transformative medicines to treat diseases caused by protein or gene dysfunction. Using our proprietary mRNA therapeutic platform (MRT), we create mRNA that encodes functional proteins. Our mRNA is delivered to the target cell where the cell’s own machinery recognizes it and translates it, restoring or augmenting protein function to treat or prevent disease. The candidate will Lead formulation development of mRNA drug targets entailing: LNP formulations for in vitro/in vivo studies; develop next generation formulations including surface modifications, targeted LNP formulations for different applications, immunomodulation; work closely and build relationships with select CROs with focus on in vivo studies, drug carrier design/development, assay development; and prepare technical reports and presentations for clear communication of scientific findings across interdisciplinary teams. Learn more…
Drug delivery scientist, AstraZeneca.
The Drug Delivery team is a part of the Dosage Form Design and Development group of Biopharmaceutical Development. The Drug Delivery team’s purpose is to improve patients’ lives by ensuring AstraZeneca’s therapies are as safe, effective, and convenient as possible through the use of technologies that target delivery of medicines to the site of action and optimize their effective half-life. This purpose is realized through application of a wide range of scientific disciplines converging to bridge between formulation and device capabilities and providing leadership from early research through CMC activities for these technologies. Learn more…
Funding opportunities
| Funding Source | Grant ID | Deadline | AACR-Mirati Cancer Chemical Biology Research Fellowship | N/A | January 27, 2022 | Toward Translation of Nanotechnology Cancer Interventions (R01) | PAR-20-116 | May 17, 2022 |
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