Dr. Tyler Jacks is director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He received his A.B. in biology from Harvard College and in 1988 his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco. After graduate work with Harold Varmus, Dr. Jacks was a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute. Dr. Jacks is David H. Koch Professor of Biology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His lab has pioneered the use of gene-targeting technology in transgenic mice to study cancer-associated genes and construct mouse models of human cancers of the lung, brain and ovary. Dr. Jacks was named the 2005 Simon M. Shubitz Lecturer and Award recipient, and shared the 2005 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research awarded by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research is an out growth of the MIT Center for Cancer Research. The Center for Cancer Research initially established in 1973 has for over 30 years brought together extraordinary biologists in collaborative studies of human cancer. Over the past decade many of these researchers have established collaborations with other scientists and engineers at MIT. The new David H. Koch Institute, to be housed in the Koch Institute (completion date Dec 2010), will bring together in one building biologists, engineers and other scientists in order to stimulate interactive activities aimed at understanding, treating and curing human caners. While the building is not complete, the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research has been established. Major area of research include the development of nanotechnology to specifically target caner cells, advanced imaging technology to improve the early detection of human caner, programming the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells, and systems analysis of cancer pathways and drug resistance. These programs are combining MIT’s strengths in engineering and biology to develop the next generation of cancer treatments.