June Bulletin

Issue 69

Community Notices

Ten Years at the Koch Institute

Join the Koch Institute at MIT on Friday, June 17, 2022 in person or online for our annual Cancer Research Symposium, featuring Francis Collins, Ned Sharpless, and MIT Koch Institute researchers and alumni.

Missed last month’s Distinguished Seminar?

Here is a link to Drs. Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg talk on “New molecular technologies for genome editing and cell control.”

Annual Reports and RFP

Annual reports for Marble Center projects will be due on June 17th . Next academic year’s RFP will be issued June 27th. If you have any questions, please contact Tarek Fadel (tfadel@mit.edu).

Congratulations to the winners of the Marble Center Poster Symposium!

**Winners of the 2022 Marble Center Poster Symposium.**

From left to right: Dr. Edward Tan (Bhatia Lab), Allen Jiang (Anderson/Langer Labs), Dr. Núria Puigmal (Artzi Lab), and Dr. Parisa Yousefpour (Irvine Lab), pictured with Professor Sangeeta Bhatia. Check out the event summary here.

In the News

MIT Bridge Project Spans Disciplines for Better Cancer Diagnostics

In 2019, 20 women diagnosed with ovarian tumors greed to try out a new MIT-designed skin patch—a small, clear, flexible disc that may one day become the first noninvasive screening tool for ovarian cancer.

Short of a biopsy, there’s currently no screening method or diagnostic test for ovarian cancer, the fifth-leading cause of cancer deaths among women. MIT researchers Darrell Irvine PhD ’00 and Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93 are melding their expertise in engineering, immunology, and polymer chemistry to change that.

**Dr. Sasan Jalili,** **a postdoctoral researcher at the Koch Institute and 2021-2022 Convergence Scholar**, helped design the microneedle patches to project only several hundred microns into the skin, where there are few capillaries and pain receptors. The patches are made of a biodegradable, FDA-approved polymer similar to the material used in resorbable sutures. Their tiny prongs are coated with hydrogels, a network of polymers that can absorb water or biological fluids without losing their structure. (*Image from Sasan Jalili, PhD)*

“Ovarian cancer over the past 30 years has seen very little improvement in survivability. We need multiple means of addressing this disease; there’s not going to be a single bullet,” says Paula Hammond, Institute Professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. The microneedle patch Hammond is developing with Darrell Irvine, the Underwood-Prescott Professor in the Departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, could become a lifesaving tool for the early detection of ovarian cancer. Read more…

Dr. Daniel Anderson answers questions on the progress of mRNA vaccines

(Anne Trafton, MIT News) Following the successful development of vaccines against Covid-19, scientists hope to deploy mRNA-based therapies to combat many other diseases. Daniel Anderson, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research’s Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine, and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, has spent many years working on ways to package and deliver mRNA. Anderson, who recently co-authored a recent Nature Biotechnology review on mRNA therapies, answered some questions from MIT News on the progress of this technology. Read more…

**(From Barbier, A.J. *et al.,* Nature Biotechnology** **The clinical progress of mRNA vaccines and immunotherapies** **(2022)**) 2020 timeline showing rapid development of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.

Lipid nanodiscs STINGing tumors

Lipid nanodiscs from Dr. Irvine’s Lab outperform other lipid nanoparticles, more efficiently permeating tumors, inducing tumor rejection, and supporting immune memory against reintroduced tumor cells. With a single-dose therapy tested in three different tumour models, the Irvine lab and colleagues found that the platform achieved ~80% tumor rejection in a colon cancer mouse model and a ~50% increase in median survival time in a breast cancer mouse model.

Check out the publication in Nature Materials as well as the News & Views from former Langer Lab member and Marble Center alum, University of Pennsylvania’s Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation Dr. Michael J. Mitchell.

**(From Gong, N. & Mitchell M., adapted from Dane, E. *et al.* Springer Nature Ltd.)** (a) STING-activating CDNs were conjugated to PEGylated lipids (CDN–PEG-lipids) via a cleavable linker and incorporated into LNDs. Upon systemic administration, LND-CDNs penetrate deep into tumors and achieve substantial accumulation of the CDNs throughout the tumor tissue to reach dying tumor cells and dendritic cells (DCs). (b) DCs acquired tumor debris in the wave of tumor cell death following CDN-mediated vascular collapse. LND-CDNs and tumor debris are taken up simultaneously by DCs in the tumor or lymph. (c,d) DCs then migrate to the tumor-draining lymph nodes (c) and antigen-specific T cells are primed (d). (e) Antigen-specific T cells can then recognize and attack tumor cells.

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia named one of Fierce Pharma’s 2022 Most Influential People in Biopharma

(Annalee Armstrong, Fierce Pharma) Sangeeta Bhatia, M.D., Ph.D., is a lot of things. A faculty member at MIT. A professor. An entrepreneur with Satellite Bio. A board member. A mentor. A mom. But most importantly, she is “existence proof” for women coming behind her that, yes, you can be all of those things.

“When I was coming up, I really looked for those existence proofs. It was really important to me to find women out there that seemed to have both the career and the life that I dreamed about,” Bhatia said in an interview. Now, she knows women are looking to her for the same. “Sally Ride always said, ‘You can't be what you can't see.’ So I take that as a sort of duty and an obligation to be visible for the next generation.”

And visible, she is. From her position as director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and head of the Bhatia Laboratory, Bhatia and her students are researching micro- and nanotechnology to apply these engineering tools to medicine. The lab specifically focuses on cancer, liver disease and infectious disease. Read more…

Jobs

Scientist, LNP Discovery Formulations, Beam Therapeutics.

Beam Therapeutics is seeking a scientist with expertise in nanoparticle delivery to conduct the LNP formulation and characterization of LNPs targeting extrahepatic cell-types and tissues, including the CNS and eye. The ideal candidate will have experience with the formulation and testing of lipid nanoparticle formulations and be excited to work in a fast-paced and multi-disciplinary environment. Read more...

Scientist / Bioengineer, Synthetic Biology, Port Therapeutics.

Port Therapeutics is seeking an exceptional individual to join our growing Synthetic Biology team as a Scientist / Bioengineer in the Greater Los Angeles Area, CA. The candidate will be a motivated researcher that will play a lead role in the design, characterization, optimization of genetic circuits as it relates to mammalian cell therapy for cancer. The individual may work on multiple programs in parallel at various stages of development. Read more…