March Bulletin

Issue 78

Community Notices

March Research Seminar.

Next open Marble Center seminar is on Monday March 20th, 4-5pm at the KI Luria Auditorium with a presentation by Dr. Ana Jaklenec on “Engineering Delivery for Vaccines and Cancer Immunotherapy.” Dr. Jaklenec is a Research Scientist and Co-Principal Investigator in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Langer at the MIT Koch Institute. Her group is focused on engineering delivery systems for global health. Dr. Jaklenec has over 20 years of experience in the area of bioengineering, materials science, micronutrient and vaccine stabilization and delivery.

Following the research talk, Dr. Ava Amini will present a hot topic discussion on “AI, GPT, and the Future of Biology.” Dr. Amini is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, New England. Her research focuses on developing new computational technologies for precision medicine, where she works at the interface of machine learning and biophysics. She completed her PhD in Biophysics at Harvard University, where she worked with Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia at the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

After the seminar, please join us for a social with food and drinks (starting at 5:00pm). For those who prefer to join remotely, the Zoom link will be provided upon request (please email Tarek Fadel at tfadel@mit.edu).

2023 GO Nano grant award announcement

(Left to right) Dr. Ameya Kirtane, Prof. Giovanni Traverso, Dr. Alvin Chan.

Dr. Alvin Chan, postdoctoral fellow at Prof. Giovanni Traverso’s lab, was awarded the inaugural Global Oncology in Nanomedicine grant from the Marble Center. The project will focus on making RNA-based therapies more accessible by combining high-throughput lipid nanoparticle (LNP) screening and deep learning to predict the optimal stability for LNP-RNA formulations.

SAVE THE DATE: 2023 Marble Center Poster Symposium on May 9th, 3-5pm

The 2023 Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine poster symposium will convene members of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and broader MIT community working on nano- and precision based approaches for the early detection and treatment of cancer. The event will be held at the Koch Institute Luria Auditorium. This will be an in-person only event, and will be an excellent opportunity to highlight collaborative projects in this area and get feedback from faculty and industry members. Registration opens March 20, 2023.

Multimedia

Machine Learning Enabled Label-Free Live-Cell Optical Identification

Enhancing the postdoctoral experience at the MIT Koch Institute

Prof. Sangeeta N. Bhatia (MIT) joins Lydia Hauteur (Senior Investment Manager at Pictet Asset Management) and David Braga (Malta Private Equity Health Strategist at Pictet Alternative Advisors) as they discuss the future of medicine and delve into the latest advancements nd technologies shaping the biotech and health industries. This episode is moderated by Hubertus Kuelps, Head of Group Communication and Equity Partner at Pictet Group.

In the News

Decades after breakthrough, scientists still puzzling over mRNA delivery

(Nicole DeFeudis, Endpoint News) For decades, MIT professor Robert Langer believed scientists could deliver large molecules such as RNA through tiny particles to treat a range of diseases. When he told a group of senior scientists about his ideas for drug delivery at a Chinese restaurant in 1979, one of them blew cigar smoke in his face.

“You better start looking for another job,” the scientist said.

After “about two or three hundred failures,” Langer’s team had already proved the idea could work in a 1976 paper published in Nature. Still, he faced a string of rejected grants and skepticism. His research on drug delivery, which led him to co-found Moderna in 2010, went on to prove critical in developing the company’s Covid-19 vaccine. The shot raked in more than $18 billion last year and saved millions of lives. Langer never thought messenger RNA’s potential was limited to vaccines, and now neither do other scientists and investors. Drugmakers are pursuing a range of disease areas, from cancer to cystic fibrosis, triggering a record $3.2 billion in venture cash in 2021. Another $2 billion followed in 2022, according to DealForma’s Chris Dokomajilar. The large investments solidified mRNA as the next big thing after decades of existing on the fringes. Read more…

Unlikely Rebels With a Very Good Cause

Nancy Hopkins, the unlikely rebel at the head of a movement for women’s equality, at M.I.T.’s Center for Cancer Research, 1973. **Credit: MIT Museum**

(Excerpt from a review by Bonnie Garmus, The New York Times) The word “exception” implies rules, and as we know, rules are made to be broken. But in real life, it can be a frustrating business — especially if you’re a woman in science, especially in the decades leading up to the 21st century and especially if you’re not the rule-breaking type.

There were 16 rule breakers on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And exactly what these women endured for the right to do their work is the subject of Kate Zernike’s excellent and infuriating new book. Inspired by a story Zernike (now a reporter at The New York Times) broke for The Boston Globe in 1999, “The Exceptions” is an intimate, behind-the-scenes account of how those scientists conducted a four-year study that resulted in M.I.T.’s admitting to a long history of sexual discrimination. Today Hopkins is the Amgen professor of biology emerita at M.I.T., focusing on advocacy for cancer prevention and research, while co-founding, with Sangeeta Bhatia and Susan Hockfield, the Future Founders Initiative to increase the number of female faculty members who start biotechnology companies. Read more…

Targeting Antigen “Sanctuary” in Lymph Nodes Could Make Vaccines Better

(Natalia Mesa, PhD, The Scientist) Vaccines might work better if they know where to go: to small sacks inside lymph nodes called lymphoid follicles. According to research published in Science on January 27, vaccines that rapidly seek shelter inside follicles are more likely to trigger a strong immune response. In comparison, vaccines that dawdle around elsewhere in the body can get degraded, leading to mediocre protection. The discovery that a vaccine’s target location influences its effectiveness could help scientists design better protein-based vaccines. “I’m certainly excited by the work and the quality of the study,” says Jason Cyster, an immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who didn’t work on the project. “It’s an important advance.”

Vaccines introduce the body to antigens—bits of weak or inactive viruses that launch a protective response against the real thing. As with most foreign substances that pierce the skin, vaccines ooze to the lymph nodes. Before antigens get there, though, they encounter protein-cleaving enzymes called proteases, which are present throughout the bloodstream and notoriously mangle antigens. So, by the time antigens reach the B cells that produce pathogen-detecting antibodies, they can be almost unrecognizable. This means immune cells will make antibodies against a protein that looks nothing like the original vaccine. For that reason, a continual, fresh supply of antigens sometimes results in better immunity, explains study coauthor Aereas Aung, an immunologist and biomedical engineer at the University of Toronto who previously worked as a postdoc at MIT in fellow study author Darrell Irvine’s lab. Inside the body, follicular dendritic cells are thought to provide B cells, the other immune cells in the follicle, with a continual antigen supply. Follicular dendritic cells churn out exact copies of the antigen, but it’s unclear how they do so.” Read more…

STAT Madness 2023: Support our researchers!

Voting is now open for the seventh-annual STAT Madness bracket competition! STAT Madness—which is modeled on college basketball’s March Madness tournaments—is a bracket-style competition. The teams competing are from colleges, universities, and institutions across the U.S. who published exemplary biomedical research in 2022 (including our very own researchers from the MIT Koch Institute / Marble Center):

In Matchup 12, we have the Li Lab’s "Antibodies Test" (as seen in Cell Reports Methods and MIT News).
In Matchup 13, the Bhatia Lab's "Pneumonia Sensor" (as seen in PNAS and MIT News).
In Matchup 24, the Hammond and Straehla Labs’ “Nanoparticles and Cancer” (as seen in Science and MIT News).

Voting will continue through six single-elimination rounds before the winner of the popular vote is announced April 4.

Jobs

Postdoctoral Fellow, Cell Line Development, Sanofi.

The Cell Line and Cell Bank Development department at Sanofi in Framingham/Waltham, MA is seeking a highly motivated PhD graduate for a postdoctoral fellowship to evaluate and optimize a new stable cell line development platform(s). The project goals will include enabling high yield material supply on accelerated timelines, thus accelerating speed to the clinic for mAbs and AAV-based viral vectors. Strong candidates will have experience in one or more of the following: recombinant stable cell line development (transfection, selection, cloning), flow cytometry/FACS, genetic characterization (such as PCR, ddPCR, NGS, TLA), some experience with bioinformatics, expression vector optimization, and/or related skills. Read more…

Senior scientist, LNP discovery, Beam Therapeutics.

Beam is seeking a highly-motivated Scientist/Senior Scientist to join the LNP Discovery group at our site in Cambridge, MA. Primary Responsibilities: design, synthesize, and characterize novel lipids, which will be used to formulate nanoparticles for encapsulation of base editor payloads; discover and optimize new lipid components that drive the efficacy, selectivity, and safety of potential therapeutics; help manage team of CRO chemists by providing synthesis targets, route troubleshooting, and feedback; manage lipid inventory (physical stocks and electronic cataloging); perform occasional bioconjugations linking lipid nanoparticles to auxiliary ligands; work with other chemists, screening, and hit validation team members to facilitate smooth pipeline of testing novel lipid compositions.. Read more…