KI's Robert Langer has been selected to receive the 2012 Priestley Medal. Langer is being honored with the American Chemical Society’s most prestigious award in recognition of cutting-edge research that helped create the controlled-release drug industry and the field of tissue engineering. read more

MIT Researchers have identified signals that can induce breast epithelial cells to transition to and maintain a mesenchymal and stem cell-like cell state – a state that gives both normal and cancer cells a greater ability to migrate and self-renew. Interrupting these signals strips the cells of the migratory, invasive, and self-renewal abilities used by cancers to seed new tumors.  read more
 

Researchers at the KI and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital have identified a new way to shut off one of the proteins that spreads cancer’s uncontrollable signals — a receptor known as HER3.   They could effectively shut off growth in six different types of cancer cells that overexpress HER3 by treating the cells with a novel ligand.  read more

KI researchers have identified a class of drugs with selective activity against cells expressing oncogenic K-ras – the most frequent oncogenic mutation in human cancer. The most potent member of this class, lanperisone, acts by inducing nonapoptotic cell death, selectively killing K-ras-expressing cells. read more

KI and Whitehead Institute researchers have found that depriving human melanoma cells of the essential amino acid leucine can be lethal to the cells, suggesting a possible strategy for therapeutic intervention. The researchers observed the effect in melanoma cells with a mutation in the RAS/MEK signaling pathway—the most common mutation found in the deadliest form of skin cancer.  read more

KI engineers have designed a new type of drug-delivery nanoparticle that exploits a trait shared by almost all tumors: they are more acidic than healthy tissues. "Such particles could target nearly any type of tumor, and can be designed to carry virtually any type of drug", says KI's Paula Hammond. The new MIT particles are cloaked in a polymer layer that protects them from being degraded by the bloodstream. However, the KI team designed this outer layer to fall off after entering the slightly more acidic environment near a tumor, revealing another layer that is able to penetrate individual tumor cells.   read more