@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social Single-Cell and Spatial Methods for Multimodal Functional Glycan Profiling in Tissues
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @harvard.edu @broadinstitute.org @shaleklab.bsky.social @ragoninstitute.bsky.social @laurakiessling.bsky.social
Check out our paper to learn more:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@mitkochinstitute.bsky.social @mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @stanford-chemh.bsky.social @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social
Great to see our work to engineer AbLecs as a new immunotherapy modality featured in @natrevdrugdiscov.nature.com!
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A simple figure of a Y-shaped lectin is in center. In background are 2 photos showing the amount of killed cancer cells, in red, over 5 hours.
Cancer cells use sugar-based immune checkpoints to suppress immune attack. New work from Jessica Stark & Carolyn Bertozzi shows that blocking these glycan checkpoints with AbLecs can release that brake & boost anti-tumor immunity across cancer types.
news.mit.edu/2025/new-imm...
Congrats!! 🥂🍾
17.01.2026 17:46 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Vaccines, the most impressive public health intervention in medical history, and where we could be headed if there was not efforts to negate truth, facts, and evidence
A great, open-access, review and perspective by @scientificdiscovery.dev
Researchers led by Dr. Jessica Stark (@jcstark.bsky.social) have developed a new way to stimulate the immune system to attack tumor cells, using a strategy that could make #CancerImmunotherapy work for many more patients.
📰 MIT News: https://bit.ly/3YlpCeq
New online in @natbiotech.nature.com: Cancer immunotherapy benefits from antibody-lectin chimeras that block glyco-immune checkpoints.
19.12.2025 09:38 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Congratulations @jcstark.bsky.social and the team, antibody-lectin chimeras (AbLecs), a new modality for cancer immune therapy, now published @natbiotech.nature.com. These bispecifics can block glyco-immune checkpoint receptor ligands directly at the immune synapse/activate immune effector functions
16.12.2025 16:55 — 👍 39 🔁 15 💬 2 📌 1
Antibody-lectin chimeras for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade - @jcstark.bsky.social @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social go.nature.com/4aRDpk8
16.12.2025 15:40 — 👍 26 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 2
A new jump forward in cancer immunotherapy blocking glycan sugar molecules (antibodies to lectin, AbLec) that releases the immune system brakes against many types of tumors @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social @jcstark.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
16.12.2025 15:11 — 👍 116 🔁 30 💬 1 📌 1
This won't be the last you'll hear about AbLecs, stay tuned for updates from the team at Valora Therapeutics (www.valoratherapeutics.com), who are working to bring this technology to patients.
16.12.2025 15:01 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I also want to acknowledge funding from multiple sources including the NIH, HHMI, @bwfund.bsky.social, @thevfoundation.bsky.social, @sitcancer.bsky.social, and @americancancersoc.bsky.social, which made this work possible.
16.12.2025 15:01 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1I am grateful to an incredible team of co-authors, including multiple members of my lab, my mentor @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social, as well as Rong Li, @barbcheifet.bsky.social, and reviewers @natbiotech.nature.com who helped shape the final version of this story.
16.12.2025 15:01 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0We show that AbLecs effectively block glyco-immune checkpoints, resulting in enhanced antitumor immune responses in vitro and in vivo. AbLecs can be tailored to treat different cancer types and to exhibit various mechanisms of action, thus representing a new immunotherapy modality.
16.12.2025 15:01 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
To address this gap, we engineered AbLecs: bispecific antibody-like molecules composed of a cell-targeting antibody domain and a lectin “decoy receptor” domain. AbLecs bind glycans on the target cell and block their ability to engage inhibitory lectin receptors on immune cells.
tinyurl.com/jxvhtv24
Altered glycan structures on cancer cells suppress antitumor immune responses by engaging inhibitory lectin (glycan-binding) receptors. These so-called glyco-immune checkpoints remain difficult to drug, despite decades of effort and multiple therapeutic approaches attempted.
16.12.2025 15:01 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Out now: We present antibody-lectin chimeras (AbLecs) as a molecular platform to target sugars, or glycans, for cancer immunotherapy.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@mitkochinstitute.bsky.social @mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @stanford-chemh.bsky.social
Fewer funded grants and graduate fellowships mean fewer innovative technologies and disease cures in our future.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
🚨 Attention undergraduate scientists and engineers! 🚨 Want to spend a summer doing research at MIT? Join us for the 2026 MIT Summer Research Program!
Learn more and apply: oge.mit.edu/msrp/
@mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @mitkochinstitute.bsky.social
It's a great year to join the Leading Edge community 🕊️🤍
06.11.2025 00:56 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Congratulations, Abbey and team! Such a cool story.
04.11.2025 20:32 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Great to see this story in print! Congrats @megtriesscience.bsky.social @douglaspdyer.bsky.social and team! Looking forward to sharing Megan's first contributions as a postdoc in our lab at @mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @mitkochinstitute.bsky.social soon... 👀
04.11.2025 20:03 — 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Why fundamental research is fundamental to progress, seeding major breakthroughs
Editorial @nature.com this week
And 7 basic science discoveries that changed the world
nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/articles/d41...
We are recruiting new faculty in IMES at MIT!
IMES (Institute for Medical Engineering and Science) is the MIT home of the famous HST program. As faculty are also appointed in a department at MIT, we have diverse research programs, all focused on human health.
faculty-searches.mit.edu/imes-search/
“It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.” America’s cancer research system, which has helped save millions of lives and is in one of its most productive moments, is under threat by the Trump administration.
14.09.2025 16:15 — 👍 887 🔁 478 💬 68 📌 75
Wow!
Covid vaccine development and delivery cost $79.4 billion, but the health and economic benefits of vaccination were valued between $4.83 trillion–$37.8 trillion.
A return on investment of $59.8–$475 per dollar invested!!
This is why vaccine equity matters!
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
World Health: The Magazine of the World Health Organization. May 1980. smallpox is dead!
#ThrowbackThursday: In 1980 the 🌍🌎🌏 was declared #smallpox free, thanks to mass vaccination efforts.
Smallpox was an acute contagious disease caused by the variola virus. It was one of the most devastating diseases known to humanity. #VaccinesWork
"The ideas and technologies that are being destroyed today, ... some of them irreversibly, those are the cures that would have been present 20 years from now."
"It’s people who will get cancer in 10, 20, or 30 years who will really pay the price for these cuts."
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...
Congrats @kamphorstlab.bsky.social !! 🍾
08.07.2025 22:48 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
