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jcstark.bsky.social
Jessica Stark
@jcstark.bsky.social
2.3K followers 640 following 35 posts
Understanding and engineering glycoimmunology | Asst Prof @ MIT BE, MIT ChemE, and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research | jstarklab.com
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Jessica Stark @jcstark.bsky.social · Dec 16
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
Antibody-lectin chimeras for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade - Nature Biotechnology
Cancer immunotherapy benefits from antibody-lectin chimeras that block glyco-immune checkpoints.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Jessica Stark
mitkochinstitute.bsky.social
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...
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.
January 15, 2026 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
erictopol.bsky.social
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
January 7, 2026 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
scienceinboston.com
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
January 5, 2026 at 7:50 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
rongl.bsky.social
New online in @natbiotech.nature.com: Cancer immunotherapy benefits from antibody-lectin chimeras that block glyco-immune checkpoints.
December 19, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social
Congratulations @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
December 16, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
natbiotech.nature.com
Antibody-lectin chimeras for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade - @jcstark.bsky.social @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social go.nature.com/4aRDpk8
Antibody-lectin chimeras for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade - Nature Biotechnology
Cancer immunotherapy benefits from antibody-lectin chimeras that block glyco-immune checkpoints.
go.nature.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
erictopol.bsky.social
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...
December 16, 2025 at 3:11 PM
jcstark.bsky.social
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
Antibody-lectin chimeras for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade - Nature Biotechnology
Cancer immunotherapy benefits from antibody-lectin chimeras that block glyco-immune checkpoints.
www.nature.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:01 PM
jcstark.bsky.social
Fewer funded grants and graduate fellowships mean fewer innovative technologies and disease cures in our future.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine
A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.
www.nytimes.com
December 2, 2025 at 12:37 PM
jcstark.bsky.social
🚨 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
November 18, 2025 at 12:05 PM
jcstark.bsky.social
It's a great year to join the Leading Edge community 🕊️🤍
leadingedgeprogram.bsky.social Leading Edge Fellows Program @leadingedgeprogram.bsky.social · Nov 5
The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor.

The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2.

www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/
Candid photo of Zara Weinberg. She has short red hair, bangs and glasses. She is laughing.
November 6, 2025 at 12:56 AM
jcstark.bsky.social
Great 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... 👀
megtriesscience.bsky.social Megan Priestley @megtriesscience.bsky.social · Nov 4
My PhD work is (finally) published in Science Signaling! And it made the cover!

Here’s what we found 🧵⬇️

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
November 4, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
erictopol.bsky.social
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...
October 29, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
contaminatedsci.bsky.social
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/
MIT Faculty Searches MIT INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE FACULTY SEARCH
faculty-searches.mit.edu
October 14, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
nytimes.com
“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.
Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer
America’s cancer research system, which has helped save millions of lives, is under threat in one of its most productive moments.
nyti.ms
September 14, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
madhupai.bsky.social
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...
The global return-on-investment of COVID-19 vaccines in the first year of the vaccination programme
COVID-19 vaccines played a critical role in reducing global health burden during the COVID-19 pandemic, but their rapid development required extraordinary effort. This study aims to evaluate their glo...
www.medrxiv.org
September 7, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
who.int
#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
World Health: The Magazine of the World Health Organization. May 1980. smallpox is dead!
August 28, 2025 at 9:17 AM
jcstark.bsky.social
"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...
Opinion | America First? Not When It Comes to Your Health.
www.nytimes.com
August 24, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social
Spending a few days with intramural researcher at NIH has me thinking about the old Bell Labs, the storied research institute where major breakthroughs in physics, chemistry and mat sci (and associated @nobelprize.bsky.social awards) were made in the 70s-80s 1/n
June 13, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
labwaggoner.bsky.social
Federal science cuts aren’t just halting medical research or disrupting clinical trials. They are already costing us $8.1 billion and 35,000 jobs. The projected loss is $16 billion and 68,000 jobs every year. This reaches every corner of America.
scienceimpacts.org
SCIMaP - Impacts of Federal Cuts to Science and Medical Research
Developed by an interdisciplinary research team, this website shows how funding cuts reduce economic activity and employment nationwide
scienceimpacts.org
June 13, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
science.org
“As the Trump administration continues to drastically defund and dismantle basic science in America, the United States is presenting other countries with opportunities to take the lead …” writes H. Holden Thorp in a new #ScienceEditorial. scim.ag/43R82B5
"The United States will no longer have the same window into the technologies of the future ... " - H. Holden Thorpe, Editor-in-chief, Science journals
June 9, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
jeremymberg.bsky.social
Sign on in support of the #BethesdaDeclaration

actionnetwork.org/forms/add-na...

2/2
ADD YOUR NAME: Sign the Open Letter in Support of NIH Staff
Join the courageous and committed National Institutes of Health (NIH) public servants by adding your name now.
actionnetwork.org
June 9, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
erictopol.bsky.social
The gutting of US biomedical research with loss of ~2,500 grants affecting research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious disease, global health and much more
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
June 4, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Jessica Stark
erictopol.bsky.social
Where was this important 1st randomized trial performed?
China
Where are 8 of the 10 most productive research institutions in the world as of March 2025?
China
nature.com/nature-index...
What country is radically defunding research and will lose its competitiveness?
USA
June 2, 2025 at 8:57 PM
jcstark.bsky.social
MIT ACCESS is an opportunity for undergraduates to explore cutting-edge research and graduate education in science and engineering. See for yourself what grad life is like at MIT!

Applications open June 1: access.mit.edu
@mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @mitchemistry.bsky.social
MIT ACCESS – Opening doors and promoting diversity in science and engineering
access.mit.edu
May 30, 2025 at 9:38 PM