Koch Institute - Cancer Research

Contributions to the Koch Institute microchallenge from 125 donors will unlock $12,000, which includes a $5,000 gift from Lindsay Androski ’98, as well as a $7,000 gift from Glenda Mattes and Steve Corbin in memory of Don Mattes ’67, SM ’69.  

In addition to our MIT 24-Hour Challenge donors, the Koch Institute also thanks Haejin Baek ’86 for her contribution in establishing the Koch Institute Director’s Endowed Fund.

About the Koch Institute 

Gifts to the Koch Institute Director’s Endowed Fund provide unrestricted resources to support MIT’s cancer research community, allowing us to follow the science, pursue big ideas and strategic opportunities, and train the next generation for real progress against cancer. Now more than ever, these stable, flexible funds are essential to bringing MIT ingenuity to bear against a challenge that touches all of us.

MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research takes a uniquely MIT approach to solving some of cancer’s most difficult problems. Building on more than 50 years of cancer research at MIT, our work combines the Institute’s unique culture of interdisciplinary inquiry and technological innovation with the most advanced cancer biology investigations to accelerate  discovery and translation of new ways to detect, monitor, treat, and prevent malignancies. 

“Delivery of Vaccine-Containing Particles to the Skin,” Hammond and Irvine Laboratories, Koch Institute Image Awards submission, 2012. Nanoparticles (blue) bearing vaccines engage antigen presenting dendritic cells (green), the first step in creating vaccine-mediated immunity. Koch Institute spinout Elicio Therapeutics is now translating work on these therapeutic vaccines. In Phase 2 trials, their vaccine against KRAS-mutated tumors induced immune responses in 99% of evaluable pancreatic cancer patients, with 88% responding to their own tumor-specific mutation.