September Bulletin
Issue 84
Community Notices
September Research seminar
Next open Marble Center seminar is on Monday September 11 (4-5pm, Luria Auditorium) with a presentation by Akiva Gordon of the Anderson lab on “Inhalable mRNA Gene Therapies for Genetic Disease.“ Following his talk, we will host a hot topic talk co-presented by Justine Johnson (Nanolive) and Elizabeth Nelson (Straehla lab) on live cell imaging of nanoparticle delivery with Nanolive technology.
Apply for the Koch Institute Convergence Scholars Program
Are you a postdoctoral researcher looking for professional development opportunities and to further your research career? The Koch Institute Convergence Scholars Program will be open for applications on September 18th to all member labs from the KI Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine.
Stay tuned for more information!
REMINDER: Register for the 21st annual Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery Symposium (nanoDDS)
This year’s nanoDDS will convene researchers on September 15-17 to discuss groundbreaking discoveries and developments in nanomedicine and drug delivery and highlight clinical developments and opportunities for advancing nanomedicine technology to the marketplace. The event will take place at the Kresge Auditorium at MIT.
In the News
Blackstone president’s foundation awards $15 million to cancer researchers in Greater Boston
Mindy and Jonathan Gray, founders of the Gray Foundation, are donating $15 million to various cancer researchers in Greater Boston. PHOTO COURTESY OF BLACKSTONE GROUP
(Boston Globe) A foundation created by Jon Gray — president of private equity giant Blackstone Group — and his wife Mindy has awarded $25 million to seven research teams to fight BRCA-related cancers, and all but two of them are based here in Greater Boston. The local awardees include separate teams led by two researchers at Dana-Farber: Judy Garber and Dipanjan Chowdhury. Other local recipients include groups led by Angela Belcher of MIT, Joan Brugge of Harvard Medical School, and Shawn Demehri of Mass. General.
Each of the seven teams will get $3 million for their work, with the foundation keeping $4 million in reserve to help with related lines of research as they emerge for any of the recipients. In all cases, these teams are studying new approaches for prevention, detection, or treatment of BRCA-related cancers. Read more…
A snapshot of cancer vaccine development
During this year's Koch Institute Annual Symposium, Olivera Finn outlined her decades of work in developing preventative cancer vaccines at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Photo courtesy of the Koch Institute.
The road to effective cancer vaccines has been long and difficult. Although initial attempts to use a vaccine to treat cancer date back to the 1910s, the first effective therapeutic vaccine would not emerge until about a century later, when Sipuleucel-T was used to treat prostate cancer in 2010. While the FDA-approved prostate cancer vaccine generated much excitement, its success has proven difficult to replicate. T-VEC, used to treat metastatic melanoma, is the only other cancer therapeutic vaccine approved by the FDA. While there are some preventative vaccines against viruses associated with cancer (vaccines against HPV and hepatitis B, for example), vaccines that prevent cancer directly have proven elusive.
However, as the speakers and panelists at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research’s annual symposium on June 23 demonstrated, cancer vaccine research is at a pivotal moment. “We’ve all learned over the past several years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, when vaccine therapies and vaccine development were put to the ultimate test, what is really possible,” said Koch Institute Director Matthew Vander Heiden in his opening remarks. With more than a dozen ongoing clinical trials of mRNA cancer vaccines, Vander Heiden believes that we may be “close to a new revolution of cancer vaccines.” Read more…
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act
Scientists and engineers across many fields and disciplines are united by their work at the nanoscale. Their diverse efforts have helped produce everything from faster microchips to powerful mRNA vaccines. The transformative impact of this work has been spurred by the coordination and focus on U.S. nanotechnology established by the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act in 2003. Celebrating such a broad impact and envisioning the future can be quite challenging, but this event will bring together voices from across the emerging technology landscape. There will be experts who can speak on the importance of nanotechnology in quantum engineering, optics, EHS, plastics, DEIA, microelectronics, medicine, education, manufacturing, and more.
Jobs
Senior Scientist, Genomic Medicine Unit, Sanofi.
Sanofi is seeking a Senior Scientist to be part of a team focused on targeted non-viral gene therapy that enables novel cellular engineering within the Genomic Medicine Unit. The successful candidate will play a key supporting role in building non-viral gene therapy technology as an approach for treatment of immunological, inflammatory and/or oncological diseases. The candidate will: lead the strategic development, engineering and implementation of targeted non-viral gene therapy to modify diverse cell types; assist in the execution of a novel strategy for in vivo modification of diverse cell populations to support immuno-oncology, immunology and/or rare disease programs at Sanofi. Read more…
Senior Scientist, Vaccine Analytical Research & Development.
The Vaccine Analytical Research & Development department of our Research & Development Division at Merck is seeking applicants for a Senior Scientist position available at its West Point, Pennsylvania research facility. The Senior Scientist is a laboratory-based scientific role tasked with solving complex analytical problems at the interface of biology, chemistry, and lab informatics disciplines to enable development of Vaccine supporting process development, formulation development, vaccine investigations and method lifecycle management. Read more…
Funding opportunities
| Funding Source | Grant ID | Deadline | Michelson Philanthropies and Science: Prize for Immunology | N/A | October 1, 2023 | Melanoma Research Alliance: Pilot Award | N/A | November 3, 2023 |
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