Ludwig In the News

October 28, 2022

This article reports on a new nanoparticle developed by researches led by Chicago’s Ralph Weichselbaum, Wenbin Lin and Kaiting Yang that accumulates in tumors and triggers potent therapeutic immune responses in mouse models of multiple cancers.

September 16, 2021

A study led by Ludwig MIT’s Tyler Jacks, published in Cell, showed that vaccinating against a subset of cancer antigens generated by random mutations, or neoantigens, can boost the killing of cancer cells by reawakening dormant T cells that target those neoantigens in mice bearing lung tumors.

April 16, 2021

The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research established a branch at Princeton University that will be wholly dedicated to the study of cancer metabolism and the translation of its findings into new paradigms for cancer prevention and treatment.

April 16, 2021

Ludwig Cancer Research announced on its 50th anniversary the launch of the newest branch based at Princeton University which will be wholly dedicated to the study of cancer metabolism and the translation of its findings into new paradigms for cancer prevention and treatment.

April 13, 2021

Ludwig Cancer Research announces the launch of its newest Branch, based at Princeton University and wholly dedicated to the basic and translational study of cancer metabolism.

March 8, 2021

To commemorate International Women’s Day, Ludwig scientist Johanna Joyce spoke about the healthy “microenvironments,” with supportive mentors and successful female professors, that she encountered in her journey through academia.

November 27, 2020

Ludwig Lausanne’s Klara Soukup and Johanna Joyce discuss a study, published in Cell, in which they and their colleagues reported that gliomas have a very distinct immune landscape compared to brain metastases.

October 5, 2020

Ludwig Lausanne’s Ping-Chih Ho and team report in Nature Immunology mechanisms by which the tumor’s harsh internal environment sabotages T lymphocytes, leading cellular agents of the anticancer immune response.

February 21, 2020

To design more broadly effective immunotherapies, researchers have been looking for additional immune cell types beyond T cells to mobilize against cancer. In a new Nature study, Ludwig MSK’s Taha Merghoub and his MSK colleague Vinod Balachandran report the discovery of just such a candidate: Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s).

February 19, 2020

Ludwig Lausanne’s Ping-Chih Ho and colleagues have identified a mechanism by which regulatory T cells adapt their metabolism to thrive in the harsh microenvironment of the tumor. They report in Nature Immunology that the mechanism is exclusively engaged by regulatory T cells (Tregs) that reside in tumors and that its disruption boosts the effects of cancer immunotherapy in a mouse model of melanoma.

February 17, 2020

Michel Detheux co-founded iTeos Therapeutics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing cancer immunotherapy treatments, in 2012 with Ludwig’s Benoit Van den Eynde. During this interview, Detheux discusses, among other things, iTeos’ partnership with Ludwig and how the research Ludwig funded became the foundation of iTeos.

February 4, 2020

A Ludwig Cancer Research study has devised a new type of chimeric antigen-receptor (CAR) T cell that can be switched on and off on demand. The study, led by Melita Irving of the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, George Coukos, director of the Branch, and their colleague Bruno Correia of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), addresses a central conundrum of CAR-T therapies: their tendency to provoke potentially deadly runaway immune responses against healthy tissues in patients.

 

October 17, 2019

A recent Nature study led by Ludwig Stanford’s Michelle Monje suggests that gliomas communicate with local neurons by creating synapses that accelerate tumor growth. These findings could allow scientists to slow tumor growth by targeting these synapses or their signaling.

October 9, 2019

Ludwig Oxford’s Peter Ratcliffe won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, in recognition of his landmark discoveries on the mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to the availability of oxygen. He shares the prize with U.S. researchers William Kaelin of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University.

September 18, 2019

A team led by Michelle Monje of the Ludwig Center at Stanford has discovered that high-grade gliomas form synapses and tap electrical signals from healthy nerve cells to drive their own growth. Interrupting these signals with an existing anti-epilepsy drug greatly reduced the cancers’ growth in human tumors implanted in mice.

August 20, 2019

Ludwig Johns Hopkins Co-director Bert Vogelstein and Ludwig Stanford Director Irv Weissman have won the 2019 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. Weissman is renowned for being the first to isolate and characterize a human tissue stem cell—the hematopoeitic stem cell. Vogelstein is known for modeling the progressive mutational events underlying colorectal cancer and for being part of the team that first sequenced a cancer exome.

August 1, 2019

Researchers led by Ludwig Stanford Director Irv Weissman have discovered a new signal, transmitted by a protein known as CD24, that cancer uses to evade destruction by the immune system. Blocking this signal in mice implanted with human cancers allows immune cells to attack the cancers.

July 18, 2019

Ludwig Harvard investigator Rakesh Jain is one of several scientists exploring how the tumor microenvironment can help shield cancer cells from chemotherapy. His lab has shown that fibroblasts in the tumor microenvironment impair the delivery of chemotherapies, while Ludwig Lausanne’s Johanna Joyce has investigated how chemotherapy can transform macrophages into allies of the tumor.

June 11, 2019

Ludwig Lausanne Director George Coukos and his team have deciphered a complex molecular conversation between cancer and immune cells that is key to orchestrating the successful invasion of tumors by T cells that kill cancer cells. The Cancer Cell study identifies biomarkers of great relevance to cancer immunotherapy and could enable a more precise clinical classification of tumors.

February 28, 2019

Researchers at the Ludwig Center at Harvard have used single-cell technologies and machine learning to create a detailed “atlas of cell states” for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that could help improve treatment of the aggressive cancer. (Subscription required)

December 6, 2018

A Cell study led by Ludwig Stanford’s Michelle Monje examines the cellular mechanisms behind “chemo brain,” the cognitive impairment from chemotherapy that lingers after the cancer is gone, and identifies a potential remedy.

November 26, 2018

Ludwig Lausanne’s Lana Kandalaft discusses emerging dendritic cell targets, treatment cost and the future of cancer immunotherapy.

November 7, 2018

Phil Greenberg, a Ludwig SAC member and recipient of the 2018 Richard V. Smalley, M.D., Memorial Award and Lecture, answers five questions about the present and future of cancer immunotherapy.

October 4, 2018

Home to the new translational research center on cancer, the Agora building in Lausanne will bring together nearly 300 researchers and clinicians to create new therapies for patients. Initiated in 2013 by the ISREC Foundation, this project stems from a partnership between the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the CHUV, the HUG, the University of Lausanne, the University of Geneva and EPFL. This article is in French.

September 17, 2018

In this contributed piece, Ludwig MSK’s Jedd Wolchok, Roberta Zappasodi and Taha Merghoub describe their recent Cancer Cell study, in which they identified a new subset of immunosuppressive T cells.

July 20, 2018

“The Microenvironmental Landscape of Brain Tumors,” a review written by Ludwig Lausanne’s Johanna Joyce and her colleague Daniela Quail, was selected to be part of Cancer Cell’s ‘Best of 2017’ issue.

May 31, 2018

A Ludwig Cancer Research study, published in the journal Cell, has uncovered an entirely novel mechanism by which cells enter a state of dormancy as tissues starved of oxygen become increasingly acidic. The study, led by Chi Van Dang, scientific director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, has potentially significant implications for cancer therapy

April 11, 2018

A study published in Science Translational Medicine led by Ludwig MIT’s Robert Weinberg found that surgery in breast cancer patients may trigger a systemic immunosuppressive response, allowing the outgrowth of dormant cancer cells at distant sites whose ability to generate tumors had previously been kept in check by the immune system.

March 19, 2018

In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, Ludwig Harvard investigator Rakesh Jain and his colleague Dai Fukumura at Massachusetts General Hospital found that obesity, known to reduce survival in several types of cancer, may also explain the ineffectiveness of angiogenesis inhibitors, which block the formation of blood vessels that feed tumors.

January 1, 2018

Ludwig’s Scientific Director Chi Van Dang, the new Editor-in-Chief of Cancer Research, discusses the evolution of cancer research, advances in areas like the tumor microenvironment, and challenges raised by the complexity of cancer.

December 10, 2017

Ludwig’s Scientific Director Chi Van Dang expressed excitement about promising areas in the Lancet Oncology Commission report, which expands on recommendations of the Cancer Moonshot’s blue ribbon panel.

October 19, 2017

A team of scientists led by Ludwig Harvard’s Marcia Haigis may have hit upon a new therapeutic strategy against breast cancer with the finding that breast tumor cells recycle the ammonia that is generated as a byproduct of normal cell metabolism and use the toxic waste as a source of nitrogen to fuel their growth.

July 21, 2017

“A key challenge in cancer immunotherapy is to understand why some patients respond to immunotherapy but many others do not,” says Ludwig Brussels Director Benoit Van den Eynde. In a new study, covered by AACR, Van den Eynde and colleagues provide a rationale for testing anti-PD1 immunotherapy in combination with COX-2 inhibitors in the clinic to improve responses.

April 3, 2017

The Lausanne University Hospital (Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois, CHUV) is focused on the development of innovative cancer therapies. Under the guidance of Ludwig Lausanne Director George Coukos, the chosen path forward is immunotherapy. In this interview, Lana Kandalaft, Ludwig Lausanne scientist and head of The Center for Experimental Therapies (CTE), shares an update on how her team is working to bring research to the clinic. This article is in French.

April 1, 2017

Ludwig Oxford scientist Colin Goding’s recent Genes & Development study was selected as the Editor’s Choice in Cancer Biology for The Scientist’s April issue. As previously reported, the study identified an ancient, cellular starvation response, conserved through eons of evolution, that underlies the spread of the aggressive skin cancer melanoma.

March 25, 2017

Ludwig Oxford scientist Colin Goding examines why cancer cells spread within the body and explains how understanding this process can help devise new treatment options.

February 27, 2017

Ludwig Harvard Co-director Joan Brugge was recently awarded the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor. The full video of the ceremony is available here. Starting at 7:35, you can watch the ACS’ introduction of Brugge, a deeply moving video tribute to her life and research, and her acceptance speech. We are very proud to be a part of her powerful story, and congratulate her on this well-deserved honor!

January 14, 2017

​Chi Van Dang will join Ludwig as Scientific Director on July 1, 2017. A hematological oncologist and renowned researcher, Dang joins Ludwig from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, which he has directed since 2011.

January 10, 2017

In its report on the big brain cancer research-related developments of 2016, the National Brain Tumor Society cites a Cancer Cell study led by Ludwig San Diego’s Paul Mischel in partnership with a colleague at The Scripps Research Institute. That study demonstrated that GBM cells import vast amounts of cholesterol to survive and that the mechanisms they use to do so can be specifically and effectively undermined with drug-like molecules currently in clinical development.

December 27, 2016

Ludwig San Diego’s Paul Mischel spoke with Oncology Times about his recent Cancer Cell article, which identified a metabolic vulnerability in the brain cancer glioblastoma (GBM) that can be exploited by an experimental drug.

October 28, 2016

​A study co-led by Ludwig San Diego’s Paul Mischel has been featured in AACR’s Research Watch. The study demonstrates that GBM cells import vast amounts of cholesterol to survive and that the mechanisms they use to do so can be specifically and effectively undermined with drug-like molecules currently in clinical development.

September 13, 2016

The New York Times writes about the six researchers who received the prestigious Lasker Awards this year. Among them is Sir Peter Ratcliffe of Ludwig Oxford, who was recognized for his role in elucidating the mechanisms and distinct signaling pathways by which cells gauge and respond to the availability of oxygen.

September 7, 2016

A blue ribbon panel, co-chaired by Tyler Jacks of Ludwig MIT and including Ludwig scientists George Demetri and Levi Garraway, released a report for the Cancer Moonshot that describes a set of 10 recommendations for accelerating cancer research to achieve the ambitious goal of making a decade’s worth of progress in 5 years.

February 23, 2016

The MIT Technology Review takes a look at the busy life of Ludwig scientist Sangeeta Bhatia: a bioengineer, entrepreneur and role model for young women in STEM.

January 15, 2016

Ludwig Harvard director George Demetri talks to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews about what can be accomplished with Vice President Biden’s “Moonshot” initiative.

January 8, 2016

Ludwig Harvard director George Demetri was among the top cancer researchers who met with United States Vice President Joe Biden’s staff to discuss ideas for his cancer “moonshot” initiative announced during President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

June 11, 2015

Le Conseil d’Etat vaudois et un institut américain ont annoncé jeudi des dizaines de millions de francs d’investissement pour développer la recherche sur le cancer au CHUV et à l’UNIL.

July 24, 2014

How Daniel K Ludwig’s formula for success has fuelled four decades – and counting – of top-notch cancer research.

April 10, 2014

Government funding, which has long supported the bulk of basic scientific research, is increasingly threatened in the U.S. If we hope to capitalize on the remarkable progress made in molecular medicine over the past few decades to solve such intractable problems as cancer, diabetes, and other diseases, something will have to change—and soon.

March 24, 2014

American science is increasingly starved of funds. In 2013, the U.S. National Institutes of Health was forced to slash $1.5 billion from its budget. As a consequence, only one in seven biomedical researchers who apply for an NIH grant today will receive one — marking an historic low.

January 25, 2014

This month, Daniel Ludwig’s trust made a final US$540 million donation to the six American Ludwig Centers he had helped to found. In total, Ludwig has given over $900 million to the six centres.

January 9, 2014

In the case of these six cancer research centers, a $540 million endowment is meant to help them pursue work that is speculative and risky, unencumbered by the profit requirements of “the market” or the conservatism and restrictions of government funding.

January 7, 2014

Six U.S. medical centers will each receive $90 million to pursue cancer research with very few strings attached.

January 6, 2014

Six facilities for cancer studies launched in 2006 by New York-based charity Ludwig Cancer Research will each receive $90-million more from the parent group to pursue unrestricted research into how the disease starts, spreads, and can be stopped.

January 6, 2014

The estate of the late American shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig on Monday donated a total of $540 million to six elite U.S. cancer research facilities, making one of the largest one-time gifts dedicated to combating the disease.

January 6, 2014

An American shipping magnate’s trust will announce on Monday one of the largest philanthropic gifts to support cancer research: more than half a billion dollars to be divided equally among six institutions, including Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

January 6, 2014

Stanford has received a vast sum of money to study a tiny population of deadly cancer cells, a gift that could help combat the heartbreak of phoenixlike disease recurrence.

January 6, 2014

Gift from Ludwig Cancer Research fund comes as government, private grants have declined.

January 6, 2014

The Ludwig Cancer Research organization announces one of the largest gifts ever toward cancer research with $540 million to six research centers across the country.

January 6, 2014

Johns Hopkins University scientists will share in one of the largest one-time philanthropic gifts for cancer research ever made, $540 million aimed at preventing and curing the disease, officials are scheduled to announce today.

January 6, 2014

MIT and Harvard each received $90 million from Ludwig Cancer Research, on behalf of its founder Daniel K. Ludwig, which will provide funding to transform basic research on metastasis, the process by which cancer cells spread from a primary tumor to distant sites in the body.

January 6, 2014

A trust fund created by billionaire shipping tycoon Daniel K. Ludwig ends today with a bang and a gift to research. Six U.S. medical centers will receive $540 million—$90 million each—from the fund to endow cancer studies in perpetuity.

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