The Wang Lab will investigate focused ultrasound immunotherapies for prostate cancer and pediatric glioblastoma.
The USC Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering’s Wang Lab has been supported to investigate new focused ultrasound CAR T-Cell technologies, thanks to USC’s Office of Research & Innovation and the Ming Hsieh Institute.
The lab, led by Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair in Biomedical Engineering Peter Yingxiao Wang, was recently awarded a USC internal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) / Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Planning Award for new prostate cancer therapies in collaboration with industry partner Acoustic Cell Therapy. The project aims to convert ultrasound waves into short pulses of local heat generation for cell stimulation to treat prostate cancers.
The research team was also awarded support from the Ming Hsieh Institute for a project that will develop high-precision focused ultrasound (FUS) as a means to confine chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell activation (FUS-CAR) within high grade glioma (HGG) tissues, a particularly aggressive and fatal type of pediatric brain tumor.
The approach seeks to provide spatial and temporal control of CAR T cell expression with high precision, thereby enhancing tumor eradication while reducing on-target off-tumor (OTOT) toxicity.
Published on October 18th, 2023
Last updated on October 18th, 2023