Dr. Boehm leads a research group at MIT’s KochInstitute focused on bringing the power of functional genomics to bear onliving samples from cancer patients with particular emphasis on rare andunderrepresented tumors. The team partners with patients across the country,enabling them to donate living tissue for research, creates organoid and cellmodels and leverages these living tissues to make precision functional genomicspossible for individual cancer patients. A recent technological focus is ondeveloping “living biosensor” technology for label-free morphological profilingof tumor and immune populations to enable rapid ex vivo evaluation ofanti-cancer drug sensitivity in ascites fluid from solid tumors, beginning withgastroesophageal cancers.
Dr. Boehm is also the Chief Science Officer ofBreak Through Cancer, a novel foundation dedicated to urgently reimagining howwe cure cancer by harnessing the power of extraordinary partnerships. BreakThrough Cancer unites leading cancer institutions jointly focused on overcomingbarriers impossible for any single organization to solve leveraging the pillarsof “radical collaboration.”
Before transitioning to MIT, Dr. Boehmpreviously spent 15 years in the Broad Institute’s Cancer Program, mostrecently as an Institute Scientist and Scientific Director of the CancerDependency Map project. As the Director of the Broad’s Cancer Model DevelopmentCenter (part of the National Cancer Institute’s Human Cancer ModelsInitiative), he led his laboratory in developing a scalable capacity to convertpatient tumors into organoids and other cell models.
Jesse received his BS in biology from MIT andhis PhD from Harvard University, Division of Medical Sciences at Dana-FarberCancer Institute.