{"id":5014,"date":"2026-05-13T15:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&p=5014"},"modified":"2026-10-08T11:36:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T15:36:42","slug":"kenneth-austin","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/kenneth-austin\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Austin,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MIT Department: <\/strong>
Chemical Engineering

Faculty Mentor<\/strong>:
Brandon DeKosky

Research Supervisor: <\/strong>
Julian Rojo Gallegos

Undergraduate Institution:<\/strong>
Hampton University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Kenneth Austin is a rising senior Biology major with a Psychology minor at Hampton University, where he serves as President of the Minority Association of Pre-Health Students and is a published first-author researcher in the Chakafana Lab. His research focuses on developing innovative combination therapies for cancer through translational biomedical research. Kenneth has conducted research at the Dartmouth Cancer Center investigating strategies to overcome radiation resistance in glioblastoma and is currently a research intern in the DeKosky Lab at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. Here, he contributes to the development of high-throughput platforms for screening novel T-cell-engaging immunotherapies. Beyond research, he is a long-term volunteer with Hampton University’s TRiO Upward Bound program, mentoring high schoolers and supporting college readiness. Kenneth’s long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist through an MD\/PhD program, translating discoveries from the clinic and laboratory into novel cancer therapies that improve patient outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Characterizing Screening Parameters for T Cell Engager Discovery<\/strong>
Kenneth Austin1<\/sup>, Julian Rojo Gallegos2<\/sup> and Brandon DeKosky3<\/sup>
1<\/sup>Department of Biological Sciences, Hampton University
2<\/sup>Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3<\/sup>Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n


T cell engagers (TCEs) are a novel class of cancer immunotherapy that has led to long-term
remission in a subset of blood cancers and is promising in solid tumors. TCEs are bispecific
antibodies with two distinct binding arms: one that binds to T cells, and the other that binds to
a tumor-associated antigen on cancer cells, ultimately leading to cancer cell death. However,
identifying novel TCEs is difficult because individual molecules need to be tested one by one,
a process that is laborious and time intensive. As such, we have developed a high-throughput,
function-first screening platform that links TCE phenotype with genotype. The pipeline will
encapsulate reporter, target, and secretor cells within microfluidic droplets for an incubation
period, break the droplets, and then analyze the cells with flow cytometry for activation
markers. We will first use positive and negative control cells in well plate experiments to
determine assay parameters. Once these parameters have been defined, we will screen a
synthetic TCE library to assess our assay\u2019s performance. We anticipate this platform will
enable high-throughput identification of functional TCEs, establishing a scalable strategy for
screening TCE libraries for novel cancer immunotherapies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5572,"template":"","profile_category":[25],"class_list":["post-5014","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2026-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5908,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5014\/revisions\/5908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}