10/5/10 In recent years, studies have shown that for many types of cancer, combination drug therapy is more effective than single drugs. However, it is usually difficult to get the right amount of each drug to the tumor. Now researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a nanoparticle that can deliver precise doses of two or more drugs to prostate cancer cells.  In a study appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers tailored their particles to deliver cisplatin and docetaxel, two drugs commonly used to treat many different types of cancer.

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10/1/10   During its 2010 annual meeting, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) presented two awards for extraordinary impact on the engineering profession. The Academy's Founders Award was given to Koch Institute faculty member Robert Langer, who has made contributions in the areas of drug delivery and tissue engineering, and Anita Jones received the Arthur M. Bueche Award for leadership in the development of science and technology policy.   In addition to being a member of NAE, Langer has also been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He received the Founders Award for "the invention, development, and commercialization of methods and materials for drug delivery and tissue engineering, mentoring of young scientists, and the promotion of the nation's health."

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10/1/10  MIT researchers and collaborators from Tufts University have now engineered E. coli bacteria to produce large quantities of a critical compound that is a precursor to the cancer drug Taxol, originally isolated from the bark of the Pacific yew tree. The tree’s bacteria can produce 1,000 times more of the precursor, known as taxadiene, than any other engineered microbial strain.  The technique, described in the Oct. 1 issue of Science, could bring down the manufacturing costs of Taxol and also help scientists discover potential new drugs for cancer and other diseases such as hypertension and Alzheimer’s, said Gregory Stephanopoulos, who led the team of MIT and Tufts researchers and is one of the senior authors of the paper.  

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9/16/10    In a paper appearing in the Sept. 16 online edition of Science, Koch Institute faculty member Matthew Vander Heiden and researchers at Harvard University report a previously unknown element of cancer cells' peculiar metabolism. They found that cells can trigger an alternative biochemical pathway that speeds up their metabolism and diverts the byproducts to construct new cells.  The finding could help scientists design drugs that block cancer-cell metabolism, essentially starving them of the materials they need to grow and spread. Vander Heiden has just begun tests in mice of several such drugs. 

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9/12/10   FOX NEWS featured the Koch Institute in its recent program "Winning the War on Cancer" in which Koch Institute faculty members Tyler Jacks, Phil Sharp, and Bob Langer emphasize the importance of integrative and collaborative efforts as the key to fast-tracking new cancer solutions.

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