November Bulletin
Issue 98
Community Notices
Artificial Intelligence-guided Design of LNPs for Pulmonary Gene Therapy
Catch up on last month’s Marble Center seminar talk by Dr. Jacob Witten from the Anderson Lab on exciting research related to the design of next-generation gene editing technologies for pulmonary delivery.
MIT.nano Mildred S. Dresselhaus Annual Lecture on November 18
The Dresselhaus Lecture series is named in honor of Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus, a beloved MIT professor whose research helped unlock the mysteries of carbon, the most fundamental of organic elements—earning her the nickname “queen of carbon science.” This annual event recognizes a significant figure in science and engineering from anywhere in the world whose leadership and impact echo Millie’s life, accomplishments, and values.
Clare P. Grey, DBE, FRS is a Royal Society Research Professor and the Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University. After receiving a BA and D. Phil. from Oxford University, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Nijmegen and at DuPont CR&D. She joined the faculty at Stony Brook University (SBU) as an Assistant (1994), Associate (1997) and then Full Professor (2001-2015). She moved to Cambridge in 2009, maintaining an adjunct position at SBU.
2024 Irwin M. Arias Symposium on November 20
This unique one-day program brings together hundreds of leading biomedical scientists and physicians from across the globe and is designed to bridge the remarkable advances in basic biology and engineering with the understanding of liver diseases and their treatment. Research presented over the past 33 years has led to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of virtually all liver diseases in children and adults.
With plenary talks from renowned researchers and a collection of three-minute micro talks delivered by trainee scientists, the Arias Symposium is a model in ‘bridging’ between the academic, industrial, and clinical research communities – even across disciplines.
News
Implantable microparticles can deliver two cancer therapies at once
MIT researchers have designed microparticles that can deliver phototherapy to tumors, along with chemotherapy drugs. At bottom left are particles that carry the drug doxorubicin, and at top right are particles carrying violacein. (Image courtesy of the researchers.)
Patients with late-stage cancer often have to endure multiple rounds of different types of treatment, which can cause unwanted side effects and may not always help. In hopes of expanding the treatment options for those patients, MIT researchers have designed tiny particles that can be implanted at a tumor site, where they deliver two types of therapy: heat and chemotherapy. This approach could avoid the side effects that often occur when chemotherapy is given intravenously, and the synergistic effect of the two therapies may extend the patient’s lifespan longer than giving one treatment at a time. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that this therapy completely eliminated tumors in most of the animals and significantly prolonged their survival.
“One of the examples where this particular technology could be useful is trying to control the growth of really fast-growing tumors,” says Ana Jaklenec, a principal investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “The goal would be to gain some control over these tumors for patients that don't really have a lot of options, and this could either prolong their life or at least allow them to have a better quality of life during this period.”
Jaklenec is one of the senior authors of the new study, along with Angela Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute, and Robert Langer, an MIT Institute Professor and member of the Koch Institute. Read more…
Marble Center alumni spotlights
Congratulations to several Marble Center members and alumni on receiving prestigious awards:
Dr. Ivan Pires (Hammond Lab) was awarded the Koch Institute’s Peter Karches Mentorship Prize for outstanding mentorship.
Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler, formerly a Convergence Scholar (Anderson Lab) and chief of the Section on Immunoengineering at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, has been selected for the TIME100 Next list.
Dr. Padmini Pillai, formerly a Convergence Scholar (Langer Lab) has been appointed to the prestigious White House Fellows Program.
Job opportunities
Faculty position, Bioengineering and Immunoengineering, University of Chicago, Illinois. The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago invites applications for multiple faculty positions (open rank) in Bioengineering and Immunoengineering at both the Assistant Professor and Associate/Full Professor levels. The PME is a unique interdisciplinary school with significant strengths in immunoengineering, quantum engineering, and advanced materials engineering. We are interested in expanding our research themes into new areas in bioengineering and systems biology, broadly defined. We welcome applicants studying the immune system, cancer, cell and tissue engineering, immunotherapy, synthetic biology, development of biological methods and technologies, AI and its applications, omics, single cell methods, characterization and modeling of complex systems, multi-cellular systems and models, pathogen-host interactions, microbiome, and other topics.
Assistant Professor (tenure-track) in Mechanical Sciences and Materials. Brown University School of Engineering invites applications from outstanding candidates for a tenure-track faculty position(s) in Fluid Mechanics, Solid Mechanics, and/or Materials. The successful candidate shall have an outstanding record of scholarship in one of these areas with a multidisciplinary vision with other areas of interest in Brown’s Engineering. The successful candidate shall establish, or has established, an independent group in experimental, theoretical, and/or computational research, and is expected to collaborate with other Brown faculty members within and outside of the School of Engineering. We seek a faculty member who will contribute to the missions of the School of Engineering. We are particularly interested in scholars demonstrating a commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and engineering
Funding opportunities
| Funding Source | Toward Translation of Nanotechnology Cancer Interventions (R01) | November 17, 2024 | Mass Life Sciences Center Research Infrastructure program grant | December 6, 2024 |
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