August Bulletin

Written By Tarek Fadel
 

Issue 95

Community Notices

Next seminar, Monday September 30th (no seminar in August)

Next Marble Center seminar is on Monday September 30 (3-4pm) at the KI Luria Auditorium with a research talk by the Birnbaum lab and a hot topic guest presentation by Sparta Biodiscovery (spartabiodiscovery.com) hosted by Dr. Abigail Lytton-Jean, Scientific Director of the KI Nanotechnology Materials Lab. Additional details about the seminar will be shared soon.

The Engine Blueprint Applications due August 19

Blueprint, by The Engine, is a non-resident program for graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, faculty members, and their teams. The program focuses on exploring the commercialization prospects of innovative research and startup projects. This application is for the Fall 2024 Cohort and is designed to take about 15 minutes to complete. For further information, please visit our FAQ page at engine.xyz/blueprint or contact us at blueprint@engine.xyz with any additional questions. The deadline for applications is August 19th, at 11:59 pm EST.

Call for submissions now open for The Koch Institute Image Awards

Do you have a beautiful biomedical image to share? The MIT Koch Institute is now accepting submissions for the 2025 Image Awards exhibition. All MIT students, faculty, and staff are welcome to submit. See below for details and email your images with accompanying information forms to kigalleries@mit.edu by October 18th.

News

Greetings from the Drug Carriers in Medicine and Biology GRC in Portland, Maine!

The Marble Center had a strong presence at this year’s Drug Carriers in Medicine and Biology Gordon Research Conference (GRC) from participating labs to alumni in academia and industry. Congratulations to all of our researchers who were participating, including Drs. Corey Stevens (Belcher Lab) and Asheley Chapman (Irvine Lab) for winning best poster awards.

See you all hopefully next year at the Cancer Nanotechnology GRC!

Creating the Next Generation of mRNA Vaccines

(Nancy Fliesler| Boston Children’s) Current mRNA COVID-19 vaccines instruct cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This helps the immune system recognize the virus and quickly make antibodies against it. However, these vaccines offer short-lived immune protection, requiring frequent boosters, and stimulate less of a response in people over 60. They also can cause side effects.The lab of David Dowling, HMS assistant professor of pediatrics in the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s, created a version that induces a more precise level of immune stimulation and that minimizes effects in non-targeted body tissues in mice [published in Science Translation Medicine]. “In current mRNA vaccines, delivery is not controlled,” he said. “Immunomodulation is kind of random and not built into the vaccine. We wanted to solve both of those problems through rational design.” Dowling’s lab has long studied a naturally occurring immune protein called interleukin-12, or IL-12.

In this lymph node, researchers observed more B-cell activity in hotspots of antibody production known as germinal centers and more dendritic first-responder cells. Image credit: Byron Brook.

In 2012, the lab showed that IL-12 potently activates dendritic cells: crucial first responders in the immune system. Dendritic cells can activate helper and killer T cells and can provide a supportive environment to develop effective B-cell responses and antibody production. To optimize the immune response, the new study harnessed a specific IL-12, IL-12p70. Byron Brook, HMS research fellow in pediatrics at Boston Children’s, co-led the work with Valerie Duval of the biotechnology company Combined Therapeutics, Inc., [co-founded by Professors Bob Langer and Daniel Anderson from the Marble Center and Dr. Romain Micol (also CEO, President, and Board Director)]. Read more…

Marble Center researcher Carmen Martin Alonso looks ahead to a bright future as a medical researcher

HST MEMP 2024 Marble Center grant awardee Carmen Martin Alonso

(Mindy Blodgett | HST IMES) When Carmen Martin Alonso was growing up in the small town of Cordoba in the south of Spain, she loved math, science, and biology, and she dreamed of someday working in medicine. But, she says, she could never have predicted then the path she took to her budding career as a medical researcher, first studying in London, then finding her way to Cambridge, and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST). Martin Alonso, a 2024 HST Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) PhD graduate, graduated in 2018 from London’s Imperial College, with both a Bachelor’s, and a Master’s degree, in biomedical engineering. She first heard of the HST program when she received a scholarship to spend the summer doing research at MIT.

“That was when I was exposed to HST, and to Boston, and to how research is conducted here,” Martin Alonso says. In Spain, according to Martin Alonso, high school students who are interested in medicine are expected to enroll directly into medical programs at the college level, requiring them to make an early decision about career paths. “I always felt a tension between my interest in medicine, and my interest in engineering—so making the big jump from out of my small town to London allowed me to study both.” “After I got my degree, I applied for medical school in the UK, but that earlier summer at MIT motivated me to apply to HST too,” Martin Alonso says. “I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend all my time seeing patients, so HST, with its blend of both engineering and medicine, was the right balance for me.” Read more…

Jobs

Tenure track assistant professor, University of Utah. The Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics at the University of Utah College of Pharmacy seeks applicants for a Tenure Track assistant professor faculty position. Potential areas of research interests include, but are not limited to, gene and drug delivery, microbiome engineering, tumor-based infection, immunotherapy, neurotherapeutics, cell therapy, theranostics, and interfaces of modern pharmaceutics, biomedical research and data science. Preferably we seek candidates aligned with pillars of excellence in the University of Utah and the Huntsman Cancer Institute. These include initiatives in neuroscience, cancer, diabetes and metabolism, immunology, inflammation, infectious diseases and innovative bioengineering and 3D printing technologies, as well as data science and artificial intelligence. Translational alliances with the University’s Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute ( CVRTI ), the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, and/or the Health Sciences Bioinformatics cluster are other possibilities.. Read more…

Senior Scientist, Generation Bio. Generation Bio is seeking a highly motivated, enthusiastic, and creative Senior Scientist to join our bioconjugation delivery team. The individual will have the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of new platform technologies, bioconjugation techniques, and pipeline candidates. For this role, the successful candidate will integrate their knowledge of biology, chemistry, and materials science to develop targeted delivery strategies for non-viral vector-based gene therapies. In addition, this role will be responsible for managing and mentoring junior scientists and the successful candidate should have proven experience leading small teams in a highly collaborative & multi-disciplinary environment. Joining the bioconjugation delivery team in this role is an ideal opportunity to make a significant impact in the advancement of targeted delivery of gene therapies. Read more…

Funding opportunities

Events

 
Tarek Fadel https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtarekfadel/
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