GUEST AUTHOR: Nick Kolev

Project leverages a collaboration with Portal Bio and other researchers to develop predictive frameworks for improving vaccines and immunotherapies

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Sophia Liu, PhD, an Early Independence Fellow and Core Faculty Member at the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard, has been awarded $749,760 through the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) Bits to Bytes program. The funding will support Liu’s project, “Building an Immune Response Map for Antigen Prediction,” which aims to create a quantitative dataset capturing how the immune system responds to antigens in tissues.

The project represents a significant step forward in understanding immune responses at the tissue level. By generating and analyzing large datasets using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Liu and her team will develop tools to measure and predict how immune cells interact with antigens—a critical foundation for designing more effective vaccines and immunotherapies.

“This funding allows us to rethink how immune responses are measured and understood directly in tissues,” said Liu. “By building a broadly useful, quantitative dataset that captures how the immune system naturally adapts to antigens, we aim to develop predictive frameworks that ultimately improve vaccines and immunotherapies for patients.”

Liu’s project is strengthened by collaborations with industry leaders including Armon Sharei, PhD, at Portal Bio and Ava Amini, PhD, at Microsoft Research, combining cutting-edge cell engineering platforms and computational capabilities with deep expertise in immunology. These collaborations exemplify the type of cross-sector innovation that the Bits to Bytes program was designed to foster.

The collaboration also provides funding for a two-year postdoctoral data scientist position in the Liu Lab. The fellow will develop machine learning algorithms to analyze spatially-resolved gene expression and immune receptor data, helping to build predictive models for antigen structures. The position bridges experimental and computational immunology, with the goal of creating tools and a public-access data repository that can benefit the broader research community.

The MLSC launched the Bits to Bytes program to provide grants for scientific projects that generate and analyze large datasets using artificial intelligence and machine learning to answer pressing life sciences questions, and to attract and train data scientists in the Commonwealth. Liu’s award was announced as part of more than $20 million in funding distributed to 13 projects across Massachusetts supporting advancements in research infrastructure, data science, and drug delivery.

The Liu Lab at the Ragon Institute focuses on building tools to study immune cell interactions, particularly in human tissues. Liu’s research develops spatial and temporal methods for understanding how immune cells communicate and respond to challenges across different stages of life. Her work bridges tool development with fundamental questions about human immunity, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes.

About the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard

The Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard was established in 2009 with a gift from the Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Foundation, with a collaborative scientific mission among these institutions to harness the immune system to combat and cure human disease. Focusing on diseases of global importance, the Ragon Institute draws scientists, clinicians and engineers from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise to study and understand the immune system with the goal of benefiting patients.

 For more information, visit www.ragoninstitute.org

About Portal Bio

Portal Bio is building a universal infrastructure for advanced cell engineering across research, translational, and clinical applications. Its mechanical delivery platform enables efficient, scalable transport of RNA, gene editors, and molecular probes into hard-to-transfect cells and has been integrated with widely used high-throughput robotics and clinical manufacturing systems. By expanding what experiments are possible in challenging cell types, including primary immune cells and tissues, Portal helps researchers generate higher-quality biological data that advances discovery and therapeutic development. Portal’s early adopters include many leading pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions worldwide. For more information, visit https://portal.bio/