Ragon Institute
Oct 21, 2025 Awards
The Ragon Institute is proud to share that Scientific Director Facundo Batista, PhD, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), one of the highest honors in health and medicine. Election to NAM recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and a commitment to service. Batista is internationally recognized for pioneering research […]
Oct 20, 2025 Features
A new study co-led by the Batista Lab at the Ragon Institute and Scripps/IAVI shows that a single mRNA-based vaccine mix can jump-start the early steps toward several promising HIV-fighting antibodies at the same time. Because HIV is extremely diverse, a successful vaccine would likely need to train the immune system along multiple routes, not […]
Oct 14, 2025 Awards
The Garcia-Beltran Lab at the Ragon Institute, led by Wilfredo Garcia-Beltran, MD, PhD, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) High-Risk, High-Reward Research (HRHR) Program award to propel a new project that retools natural killer (NK) cells to better locate, enter, and destroy solid tumors. The HRHR program, part of the NIH Common Fund, […]
Oct 10, 2025 Features
A prestigious grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to Assistant Professor of Biology Alison Ringel will support groundbreaking healthy aging research at MIT. Ringel, also a Core Member of the Ragon Institute, will draw on her background in cancer immunology to create a more comprehensive biomedical understanding of the cause and possible treatments for aging-related decline. “It is […]
Sep 29, 2025 Features
A new paper by Ragon Institute biostatisticians in the Ghebremichael Lab introduces and tests a flexible way to grade medical tests like blood-based biomarkers so scientists can more confidently tell which ones truly separate “sick” from “healthy.” That clearer yardstick matters for immunology, where research teams must decide which candidate markers deserve scarce time and funding. Published […]
Sep 22, 2025 Features
A new Cell Reports study from the Ndhlovu Lab with partners in South Africa and Malawi explains how HIV survives in lymph nodes during treatment. The team shows that the virus weakens nearby “killer” CD8 T cells right where HIV concentrates most, inside B cell follicles. Researchers examined lymph node tissue from people with and […]
Sep 17, 2025 Features
A new multi-center study led by investigators at the Yu Lab reports that biological sex influences how the body “selects” long-lived HIV reservoir cells during years of effective antiretroviral therapy. The team finds stronger innate immune pressure in females, offering fresh clues for cure-directed strategies. Published in Science Translational Medicine, the study analyzed more than 4,000 […]
Sep 11, 2025 Features
A new study led by investigators at the Kwon Lab and collaborators shows how energy use by gut immune cells can weaken the intestinal lining in people living with HIV, even when the virus is controlled by treatment. The work identifies a metabolic switch inside these cells as a promising target to help protect the […]
Sep 8, 2025 Features
The Ragon Institute is deeply saddened by the passing of David Baltimore, PhD, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine who served as a co-chair of our Scientific Advisory Board for many years and helped to set the scientific direction of our institutional research. “The passing of David Baltimore, Nobel Laureate, is a seismic loss […]
Aug 27, 2025 Features
In July 2024, we published a story with the headline: “One of the 7 people cured of HIV tells his story. Can his cure work for others.” This summer, at the International AIDS Society conference, came news of an exciting new development in the the ongoing effort to bring the epidemic to an end. This story is […]
Aug 21, 2025 Features
We are excited to announce that Eric Dang, PhD, will be joining the Ragon Institute as a new faculty member, where he will lead the Dang Lab. Eric will serve as a Core Member of the Ragon Institute and will be proposed for an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. Dang received his […]
Jul 31, 2025 Features
The Ragon Institute is pleased to announce that Eric Sun, PhD, will join the institute’s faculty and establish the Sun Lab, dedicated to advancing computational science and deepening our understanding of the biology of aging. Sun will hold dual appointments as a Member of the Ragon Institute and an Assistant Professor in MIT’s Department of […]
Jul 23, 2025 Features
A recent study from the Ndhlovu Lab at the Ragon Institute has uncovered significant gaps in global vaccine strategies, revealing that immune system gene diversity in African populations has been widely overlooked in current vaccine design approaches. The study, published in Scientific Reports, investigated high-resolution data on Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) genes in populations from […]
Jul 11, 2025 Features
Baquero discusses her HIV research, her time at the Ragon Institute, and the importance of preserving scientific and public health progress in Argentina. Lucia Baquero is a visiting doctoral candidate from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently conducting research at the Ragon Institute as part of her doctoral work. She’s part of a longstanding collaboration between her […]
Jun 24, 2025 Awards
Tomer Milo, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Wong Lab at the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard, has received the esteemed Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship. The fellowship supports promising early-career scientists conducting innovative biomedical research. Milo, who completed his doctoral work at the Weizmann Institute of Science, is recognized for his […]
Jun 11, 2025 Features
In 2022, the Mark and Lisa Schwartz AI/ML Initiative was launched at the Ragon Institute to explore the boundaries of artificial intelligence and machine learning within the context of immunology. Its first major project was the development of the MUNIS epitope predictor by the Gaiha Lab in collaboration with MIT. Now, Ragon faculty member Sophia […]