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.

Team MATCHMAKERS will take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence to develop tools for personalized immunotherapies for cancer patients. Cancer immunotherapies, which recruit the patient’s own immune system against the disease, have transformed treatment for some cancers, but not for all types and not for all patients.