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Tag: The Mark Foundation

Five MIT faculty members take on Cancer Grand Challenges

Cancer Grand Challenges recently announced five winning teams for 2024, which included five researchers from MIT: Michael Birnbaum, Regina Barzilay, Brandon DeKosky, Seychelle Vos, and Ömer Yilmaz. Each team is made up of interdisciplinary cancer researchers from across the globe and will be awarded $25 million over five years.

Birnbaum, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, leads Team MATCHMAKERS and is joined by co-investigators Barzilay, the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the AI faculty lead at the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health; and DeKosky, Phillip and Susan Ragon Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering. All three are also affiliates of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research At MIT. Learn more

MATCHMAKERS: Solving TCR Recognition and Design Via Integrated High-Throughput Screening, Structural, Functional, and Computational Approaches

The MATCHMAKERS team will embark on an ambitious research program to revolutionize TCR-pMHC pair prediction. Central to their approach is the integration of sequence and structure datasets, leveraging the group’s unique experience to merge these approaches into a unified pipeline. The team will curate new sequence and structure datasets scaled for advanced machine learning algorithms, develop novel experimental methods for data acquisition, and devise computational strategies addressing the nuances of TCR-pMHC binding and structure. The international and interdisciplinary group of investigators will combine data collected from natural TCR repertoires, datasets generated through molecular engineering strategies, structural and biochemical analysis, and the latest advances in artificial intelligence-based predictions and machine learning. Learn more
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