Building Better Building Blocks
Designer Proteins, Molecular Networks, and Cells One of the ongoing challenges in cancer detection and therapy is to target imaging agents and deliver toxic drugs only to tumor cells and not to normal cells. To achieve this critical selectivity, Casim Sarkar, assistant professor of bioengineering, is targeting protein antigens that are uniquely or abundantly expressed […]
Understanding Cancer
Drug Efficacy and Development of the Oncosimulator “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Ravi Radhakrishnan. “We don’t even know what we are looking for.” What he wants to know sounds simple: why a drug therapy for non-small cell lung cancer and glioblastoma (cancer of the brain) works in only about 5 […]
Translational Research
From Bench to Bedside and Back Again in Pediatric Brain Injury Susan Margulies and her colleagues used to study a brain or lung injury in vivo in the lab and only record what happened. If an animal stopped breathing, they observed. If its blood pressure fell, they waited. But clinicians who are integral members of […]
Soul of Invention: Brian Litt’s Quest to Bring Moore’s Law to Therapeutic Devices
Though his work promises to transform medical care for the brain and heart, Brian Litt is motivated by a less scientific realm: his soul. Memories of patients with epilepsy whose lives were tragically altered by uncontrollable and unpredictable seizures drive Litt’s determination to find new therapeutics. Recalling, for example, the mother who drowned in the […]
Molecules that detect, monitor, and help to treat disease
On the third floor of Skirkanich Hall, Andrew Tsourkas is creating new magnetic nanoparticles that may revolutionize the detection of early cancer cells. By “early,” he means when molecular changes in the disease are occurring, but before any anatomical changes are visible. Detecting Cancer with Nanoparticles Today’s magnetic resonance imaging scans typically only reveal tumors […]