Collaborative Next Generation Chemistry Center is Launched with Berkeley, Duke, and The Broad Institute

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a Next Generation Chemistry Center (NGC) focused on chemical biology and drug discovery for rare and neglected pediatric cancers. The NGC is part of a new network created by he National Cancer Institute focused on childhood cancers called the Target Fusion Oncoproteins in Childhood Cancers (TFCC) Network. This program aims to combine therapeutic approaches with continued mechanistic studies to reveal potential treatment targets and advance the development of therapeutic strategies for fusion oncoprotein-driven childhood cancers.  

Our center will initially focus on chemical biology strategies to target the PAX3::FOXO1 oncofusion that is a driver of fusion-positive rhabdomyosarcoma. This protein is highly disordered and considered to be undruggable. New methods are needed to target this fusion and many other fusions that drive cancers of childhood. The center will use a broad set of approaches to modulate oncofusion function or levels. We are fortunate to partner with the following labs in this endeavor:

Daniel Nomura, UC Berkeley: https://nomuraresearchgroup.com/

The Broad Institute Center for Development of Therapeutics (CDoT): https://www.broadinstitute.org/center-development-therapeutics-cdot

Corinne Linardic, Duke University: https://sites.duke.edu/corinnelinardiclab/

Animation of the floppy and undruggable PAX3::FOXO1 protein surveying various shapes. The disordered nature of this protein complicates drug discovery efforts.

Ashley Booth presents at Cancer Research Day Symposium

We had the pleasure of hosting Ashley Booth as an undergraduate researcher from Penn State over the summer. Ash’s work focused on computational and biochemical approached to study the PAX3::FOXO1 fusion in pediatric alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. Here is a picture of Ash presenting the work at a Cancer Research Day Symposium!

Happy 30th to Cell Chemical Biology!

In honor of Cell Chemical Biology’s 30th anniversary, read various perspectives from chemical biologists on how the journal and the field have grown since my time as a graduate student (in the September issue). In our lab, we like to say the journal publishes chemical biology with a capital C and a capital B. Click the Photo below to access the perspectives from Michelle Arkin (UCSF), Sara Buhrlage (Harvard Medical School). Ling-Ling Chen (Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences), Peng Chen (Peking University), Jason Gestwicki (UCSF), Chuan He (U. Chicago), Gerald Joyce (The Salk Institute), Milka Kostic (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), Jun Liu (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), Jim Wells (UCSF), and yours truly here at MIT.

Visit from TAKII Seed

It was a pleasure to meet with Yutaka Fukunaga, Director of Research and Development, from TAKII Seed about our collaboration to make healthy plants. Thank you to Shinsuke for the kind introduction and we look forward to our work together!

Yichen Xiang named a 2024-2025 Takeda Fellow!

Congratulations to Yichen for another fellowship. The Takeda Fellowship was established by Takeda Pharmaceuticals Ltd. in 2020 and provides graduate student support for students conducting research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and health in the MIT School of Engineering. Yichen’s project focuses on impacting pediatric drug discovery, a vastly underfunded area of research.

Hello to The Engine Accelerator

Angela has joined the board at The Engine Accelerator, a public benefit corporation that convenes the ‘tough tech’ community, offering access to specialized labs, equipment, tools, space, and infrastructure as well as resources and services necessary to build transformative technologies. The Engine was spun out of MIT in 2016 with the purpose of bridging the gap between discovery and commercialization for the most promising inventions, so that they don’t get stuck in a lab.

Farewell to Toshi!

We bid farewell to Dr. Toshihiko Aiba, a visiting scientist from Ono Pharmaceuticals. Toshi spent the last two years in the group woking on a collaborative project between the Koehler Lab and the Calo Lab at MIT Biology, emphasizing chemical probe discovery for an RNA-binding protein that plays with come of our other favorite proteins. Keep your eyes out for a biorxiv in the fall! The group celebrated Toshi as an outstanding scientist and a very kind group member at Mestizo in Cambridge.

Congratulations to Dr. Mo Toure!

On April 22nd, our own Mo Toure successfully completed his PhD thesis, focused on the development of degraders of the CDK9 transcriptional kinase and systems biology approaches to compare degradation versus inhibition of the enzyme. This was a very special defense in that Mo has been both a Harvard undergraduate and an MIT graduate student in the lab. Mo will stick around MIT to explore both medical and commercial translation of the CDK9 degraders and recently successfully acquired a grant with the Johnson Lab in MIT Chemistry to explore degrader-antibody conjugates for CDK9.