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LSI members present at BMES 2023

Congratulations to these students who presented their work at the 2023 BMES Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA:

Ida Su – “Engineering virus-specific T cells in vivo for CAR T cell therapy”

Ali Zamat – “Remote activation of CAR T cells by MR-guided focused ultrasound for treatment of brain tumors”

Aaron Silva – “DNA-gated Cytometry for Scarless Isolation of Antigen-specific T cells”

Chloé Thiveaud – “Lipid nanoparticle delivery of synthetic antigens to sensitize solid tumors to CAR-mediated cytotoxicity”

Anirudh Sivakumar – “Monitoring immune dynamics in the tumor microenvironment via AND-gated protease sensors”

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Ida Su receives K99/R00 fellowship

Ida was awarded the prestigious NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award! Congratulations to Dr. Su on this impressive milestone!

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LSI leads ARPA-H-sponsored team to develop atlas for multi-cancer early detection

ARPA-H (the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health) is providing up to $49.5M of funding for Project CODA. ARPA-H was founded to advance the Biden Cancer Moonshot and “aims to accelerate better health outcomes for everyone by supporting the development of high-impact solutions to society’s most challenging health problems.” Project CODA seeks to map the Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas (CODA), a catalog of cancer type-specific metabolic signatures, and use this information to build bioengineered sensors for multi-cancer early detection. Toward this effort, LSI will lead a multi-institutional team that includes labs directed by Dr. Peng Qiu (Georgia Tech), Dr. John Blazeck (Georgia Tech), Dr. Tal Danino (Columbia University), and Dr. Min Xue (UC Riverside).

Summary | CODA: Mapping the Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas to Unlock Synthetic Biomarkers for Multi-Cancer Early Detection

For most tumor types, there are currently no effective diagnostic tests for detecting most cancers at the earliest stages, when tumors are still localized and most responsive to treatment. Ongoing efforts that focus on native tumor-shed biomarkers face significant challenges, as these markers are often found in vanishingly small quantities in blood or other fluids. The CODA (Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas) platform uses cutting-edge synthetic biology and cell engineering technologies to catalog cellular profiles unique to diseased cancer cells and leverages them to build bioengineered sensors that can be deployed inside the body to hunt for malignant cells. These biosensors use unique metabolic changes in tumor cells to drive the release of synthetic biomarkers that can reach high enough levels in biofluids to enable earlier cancer detection. This technology has the potential to produce a highly precise, accurate, and cost-effective test for multi-cancer early detection (MCED) that can identify common cancers earlier, when treatment can be most effective, and streamline clinical intervention when tumors are still small.

Press Coverage | Georgia Tech College of Engineering | ARPA-H | Forbes

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LSI welcomes new lab members

LSI Class 2023@2400x

This fall, LSI welcomes four new lab members! Swapnil Bawage, PhD, joins LSI as the new Head of Research Operations. Riya Sen and Matthew Wang are beginning their PhD journeys after completing undergraduate studies at Boston University and Duke University, respectively. Noah Kramer joins as a research technician after graduating from Georgia Tech last spring. Read more about the new lab members here.

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NCI funds work on CAR T cell therapy of brain tumors using focused ultrasound

LSI is partnering with the Ultrasound Biophysics and Bioengineering Lab directed by Dr. Costas Arvanitis in an R01 titled “Breast Cancer Brain Metastasis Therapy by Focused Ultrasound-Guided Control of HER2 CAR T cells.” This project will use focused ultrasound to enhance immune cell infiltration through the blood-brain barrier and guide delivery of CAR T cells to the brain for cancer therapy.

Summary | Breast cancer brain metastasis is observed in up to 50% of HER2-positive breast cancer patients and patients survive less than 2 years following CNS involvement. CAR T cell therapy is a promising new treatment but typically results in poor responses against solid tumors. This proposal seeks to apply thermal targeting by Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound to increase anti-HER2 CAR T cell delivery and potentiate therapy against breast cancer brain metastasis.

Aaron and Chloé present at Cell and Tissue Engineering Symposium

PhD students Aaron Silva and Chloé Thiveaud presented posters and gave rapid-fire talks at Georgia Tech’s first-ever Cell and Tissue Engineering Symposium as part of the Cell and Tissue Engineering Training Grant. Congrats to both of them!

Aaron Silva – “DNA-gated Cytometry for Scarless Isolation of Antigen-specific T cells”

Chloé Thiveaud – “Lipid nanoparticle delivery of synthetic antigens to sensitize solid tumors to CAR-mediated cytotoxicity”

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Elif wins Outstanding Student Award

Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Elif Kulaksizoglu for winning the Genentech Outstanding Student Award! This award recognizes one winner from each school who excelled in the field of biotechnology with high scholastic achievement through a $2,500 award and three-month summer internship.

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Jamey Siebart is awarded NSF GRFP

Congratulations to Jamey for winning a fellowship from the NSF GRFP! The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program is a prestigious program that recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, supporting their tuition and stipend for three years during a five-year fellowship period. Read more here.

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