Here's what Houston cancer researchers secured fresh funding from Texas nonprofit

grants incoming

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas recently announced fresh funding for cancer researchers, and Houston organizations received more than 40 percent of it. Photo via Getty Images

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) has awarded around $40 million in grants to cancer researchers and cancer research institutions in the Houston area.

The Houston-area grants represent more than 40 percent of the statewide grants recently approved by Austin-based CPRIT.

The largest local grant, $6 million, went to Hongfang Liu and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The grant helped attract Liu to UTHealth Houston. She is a pioneer in biomedical informatics, an emerging field in cancer research.

Liu comes to Houston from the Mayo Clinic. At UTHealth Houston, she will be director of the Center for Translational Artificial Intelligence in Medicine within the School of Biomedical Informatics as well as vice president for learning health systems.

In a news release, Dr. Giuseppe Colasurdo, president of UTHealth Houston, says the recruitment of Lui “will strategically enhance the position of Texas as a national and international leader in data science, artificial intelligence, and informatics applications in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer.”

Other CPRIT grant recipients at UTHealth Houston were:

Lara Savas — $2,499,492 for early detection and treatment of breast and cervical cancer among Latinas
Chao Hsing Yeh — $1,046,680 for an acupressure program to help patients manage cancer-related pain
Belinda Reininger — $999,254 for a lifestyle intervention program in South Texas
Paula Cuccaro — $449,959 for a targeted approach to boosting HPV vaccinations

What follows is a rundown of other CPRIT grant recipients in the Houston area.

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Kenneth Hu — $2 million to recruit him as a first-time, tenure-track faculty member
Dr. Kelly Nelson — $1,998,196 to support a program for early detection of melanoma
Robert Volk — $1,988,211 for a lung cancer screening program
Jian Hu — $1.4 million for research into brain and spinal cord tumors in children
Die Zhang — $1,399,730 for research into cognitive issues caused by radiation treatment
Peng Wei — $1,199,994 for research into the evolution of bladder cancer
Boyi Gan — $1,050,000 for the study of cell death in breast cancer patients
Sue-Hwa Lin — $1,050,000 for a novel immunotherapy to treat the spread of prostate cancer to the bones
Joseph McCarty — $1,050,000 for research into invasive cells in patients with brain or spinal cord tumors
Cullen Taniguchi — $1,049,997 for the study of immune responses related to pancreatic cancer
Dr. Andrea Viale — $1,049,985 for the study of immune responses related to pancreatic cancer
Michael Curran —$1,049,905 for research into blocking DNA damage related to radiation therapy and immunotherapy
Wantong Yao — $1,049,854 for research into a novel therapy for pancreatic cancer
Eleonora Dondossola — $1,025,623 for the study of therapy resistance among certain patients with prostate or kidney cancer
Niki Zacharias Millward — $1,019,997 for the study of a type of kidney cancer that begins in the lining of small tubes inside the organ

Baylor College of Medicine

Xi Chen — $2 million for the study of immunotherapy resistance among some breast cancer patients
Melanie Bernhardt — $1,392,407 for research aimed at improving treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children
Pavel Sumazin — $1,371,733 for research into hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer
Maksim Mamonkin — $1,050,000 for improving treatment of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and lymphoblastic lymphoma

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Ana Rodriguez — $2,257,898 for an HPV vaccination program in the Rio Grande Valley

Houston Methodist Research Institute

Ewan McRae — $1,999,977 to recruit him to Houston from the United Kingdom’s Cambridge University as an expert in RNA therapeutics

University of Houston

Lorraine Reitzel — $448,726 for lung cancer screening programs

A team of researchers out of the University of Houston has secured funding to continue research on aggressive stomach and esophageal cancers. Photo via Getty Images

UH team lands $4.7M grant for discovery linking origins of two aggressive cancers

funds granted

Frank McKeon, professor of biology and biochemistry and director of the Somatic Stem Cell Center at the University of Houston, will lead a new five-year $4.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to advance important findings about aggressive stomach and esophageal cancers.

McKeon and a team of researchers have already uncovered a surprising finding about two types of cancers: stomach and esophagus esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) and intestinal gastric cancer (iGC). According to their research, the two cancers have identical precursor stem cells or "cells of origin."

The cells are highly susceptible to mutations, which can cause them to develop into cancerous lesions.

Currently, patients who present these types of lesions struggle with an advanced disease with a low survival rate, according to a statement from UH.

"We anticipate that the identification of these cells will enable drug discovery to pre-empt these cancers at their site of origin,” McKeon said in a statement.

Uncovering this information about the cancers' cells of origin also helps researchers group EAC and iGC as a cluster distinct from other gastric and esophageal cancers.

McKeon will be joined on the project by Wa Xian, research associate professor of biology and biochemistry at UH, and Dr. Jaffer Ajani of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Xian is an expert in stem cell cloning. The team aims to clone the EAC and iGC precursor legions to better understand the evolution of the cancers as part of their research.

"We anticipate that our studies will provide new insights into the biology and origin of these remarkably similar and widespread cancers, provide datasets essential for prospective early detection screens and yield highly selective therapeutics that eliminate the nascent lesions essential for the evolution of these cancers,” McKeon added in the statement.

Other UH researchers have received major grants for cancer-fighting innovations in recent months. Shaun Zhang, director of the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling at the University of Houston and a M.D. Anderson professor in the Department of Biology & Biochemistry, received a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a cancer-fighting virus in July.

The nonprofit Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) also shelled out nearly $22 million in grants to successfully lure nine high-profile cancer researchers to Houston late last year.

Wa Xian (left) research associate professor of biology and biochemistry, with Frank McKeon, professor of biology and biochemistry and director of the Somatic Stem Cell Center at UH. Photo via UH.edu

A UH professor is fighting cancer with a newly created virus that targets the bad cells and leaves the good ones alone. Photo via Getty Images

University of Houston researchers snag $1.8M to develop cancer-fighting virus

immunotherapy innovation

Viruses attack human cells, and that's usually a bad thing — some Houston researchers have received fresh funding to develop and use the evil powers of viruses for good.

The developing cancer treatment is called oncolytic virotherapy and has risen in popularity among immunotherapy research. The viruses can kill cancer cells while being ineffective to surrounding cells and tissue. Basically, the virus targets the bad guys by "activating an antitumor immune response made of immune cells such as natural killer (NK) cells," according to a news release from the University of Houston.

However exciting this rising OV treatment seems, the early stage development is far from perfect. Shaun Zhang, director of the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling at the University of Houston, is hoping his work will help improve OV treatment and make it more effective.

“We have developed a novel strategy that not only can prevent NK cells from clearing the administered oncolytic virus, but also goes one step further by guiding them to attack tumor cells. We took an entirely different approach to create this oncolytic virotherapy by deleting a region of the gene which has been shown to activate the signaling pathway that enables the virus to replicate in normal cells,” Zhang says in the release.

Zhang, who is also a M.D. Anderson professor in the Department of Biology & Biochemistry, has received a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue his work.

Zhang and his team are specifically creating a new OV — called FusOn-H2 and based on the Herpes simplex 2 virus.

“Our recent studies showed that arming FusOn-H2 with a chimeric NK engager (C-NK-E) that can engage the infiltrated natural killer cells with tumor cells could significantly enhance the effectiveness of this virotherapy,” he says. “Most importantly, we observed that tumor destruction by the joint effect of the direct oncolysis and the engaged NK cells led to a measurable elicitation of neoantigen-specific antitumor immunity.”

Shaun Zhang is the director of the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling at the University of Houston and M.D. Anderson professor in the Department of Biology & Biochemistry. Image via UH.edu

Rice biochemist Natasha Kirienko and MD Anderson physician-scientist Marina Konopleva made the striking discovery. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Rice and MD Anderson researchers discover exciting new leukemia treatment

big win

Rice University and MD Anderson researchers have just discovered a potential one-two punch that could, they hope, knock out an insidious disease.

A recent study in the journal Leukemia centers on potential new drugs that, with the help of other medications, can thwart leukemia cells.

Specifically, Rice biochemist Natasha Kirienko and MD Anderson physician-scientist Marina Konopleva screened some 45,000 small-molecule compounds to find a few that targeted mitochondria, according to Rice press materials.

In this innovative new study, the team selected eight of the most promising compounds, identified between five and 30 closely related analogs for each, and conducted tens of thousands of tests to systematically determine how toxic each analog was to leukemia cells. This was measured both when administered individually or in combination with existing chemotherapy drugs like doxorubicin, notes a release.

Previously, Kirienko’s lab had shown the eight compounds targeted energy-producing machinery inside cells called mitochondria. Mitochondria, which work nonstop in every living cell, wear out with use. The chosen eight compounds induce mitophagy, which can be described as how cells decommission and recycle deficient and used-up.

Notably, during times of extreme stress, cells can temporarily forgo mitophagy for an emergency energy boost. Previous research has shown leukemia cells have far more damaged mitochondria than healthy cells and are also more sensitive to mitochondrial damage than healthy cells.

Thus, Kirienko and Konopleva reasoned that mitophagy-inducing drugs might weaken leukemia cells and make them more susceptible to chemotherapy. Synergy — using two or more drugs in treatment — is key.

“The point of synergy is that there are concentrations, or dosages, where a single drug doesn't kill,” Kirienko said. “There is no death of healthy cells or cancer cells. But administering those same concentrations in combination can kill a considerable amount of cancer cells and still not affect healthy cells.”

The team tested the toxicity of its mitophagy-inducing compounds and combinations against acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, the most commonly diagnosed form of the disease. They then tested the six most effective AML-killing compounds against other forms of leukemia, finding that five were also effective at killing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells and chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) cells.

Studies found all the mitophagy-inducing drugs caused far less harm to healthy cells.

Finally, the researchers tested one of the most effective mitochondria-targeting compounds, PS127E, using a cutting-edge technique called a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model. Also referred to as a “mouse clinical trial,” mice are implanted with cancer cells from a leukemia patient. As the cells grow, the mouse is exposed to a drug or combination of drugs as a closer-than-cells test of the treatment’s effect.

Importantly, PDX tests on one compound, PS127E, showed it was effective at killing AML cells in mice, Rice notes, signaling promising news.

“Although this is very promising, we’re still some distance from having a new treatment we can use in the clinic,” Kirienko added. “We still have a lot to discover. For example, we need to better understand how the drugs work in cells. We need to refine the dose we think would be best, and perhaps most importantly, we need to test on a wide variety of AML cancers. AML has a lot of variations, and we need to know which patients are most likely to benefit from this treatment and which are not. Only after we’ve done that work, which may take a few years, would we be able to start testing in humans.”

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

This UH engineer is hoping to make his mark on cancer detection. Photo via UH.edu

University of Houston engineer's research hopes to help detect cancer cells faster and easier

future of health

Early stage cancer is hard to detect, mostly because traditional diagnostic imaging cannot detect tumors smaller than a certain size. One Houston innovator is looking to change that.

Wei-Chuan Shih, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering, recently published his findings in IEEE Sensors journal. According to a news release from UH, the cells around cancer tumors are small — ~30-150nm in diameter — and complex, and the precise detection of these exosome-carried biomarkers with molecular specificity has been elusive, until now.

"This work demonstrates, for the first time, that the strong synergy of arrayed radiative coupling and substrate undercut can enable high-performance biosensing in the visible light spectrum where high-quality, low-cost silicon detectors are readily available for point-of-care application," says Shih in the release. "The result is a remarkable sensitivity improvement, with a refractive index sensitivity increase from 207 nm/RIU to 578 nm/RIU."

Wei-Chuan Shih is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering. Photo via UH.edu

What Shih has done is essentially restored the electric field around nanodisks, providing accessibility to an otherwise buried enhanced electric field. Nanodisks are antibody-functionalized artificial nanostructures which help capture exosomes with molecular specificity.

"We report radiatively coupled arrayed gold nanodisks on invisible substrate (AGNIS) as a label-free (no need for fluorescent labels), cost-effective, and high-performance platform for molecularly specific exosome biosensing. The AGNIS substrate has been fabricated by wafer-scale nanosphere lithography without the need for costly lithography," says Shih in the release.

This process speeds up screening of the surface proteins of exosomes for diagnostics and biomarker discovery. Current exosome profiling — which relies primarily on DNA sequencing technology, fluorescent techniques such as flow cytometry, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) — is labor-intensive and costly. Shih's goal is to amplify the signal by developing the label-free technique, lowering the cost and making diagnosis easier and equitable.

"By decorating the gold nanodisks surface with different antibodies (e.g., CD9, CD63, and CD81), label-free exosome profiling has shown increased expression of all three surface proteins in cancer-derived exosomes," said Shih. "The sensitivity for detecting exosomes is within 112-600 (exosomes/μL), which would be sufficient in many clinical applications."

Five cancer research teams have been selected to receive funds from a new initiative from the University of Texas. Photo via news.utexas.edu

UT system funds Houston researchers in new collaboration to cure cancer

collaborate for a cure

In a renewed effort to move the needle on finding a cure for cancer, the University of Texas system has launched a new collaboration in oncological data and computational science across three programs.

Houston-based University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has teamed up with two UT Austin schools — the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences and the Texas Advanced Computing Center. The collaboration was announced this summer to tap into mathematical modeling and advanced computing along with oncology expertise to inspire new methods of cancer treatment.

"Integrating and learning from the massive amount of largely unstructured data in cancer care and research is a formidable challenge," says David Jaffray, Ph.D., chief technology and digital officer at MD Anderson, in a news release. "We need to bring together teams that can place quantitative data in context and inform state-of-the-art computational models of the disease and accelerate progress in our mission to end cancer."

Now, the first five projects to be funded under this new initiative have been announced.

Angela Jarrett of the Oden Institute and Maia Rauch of MD Anderson will develop a patient-specific mathematical model for forecasting treatment response and designing optimal therapy strategies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.
Caroline Chung of MD Anderson and David Hormuth of the Oden Institute are using computational models of the underlying biology to fundamentally change how radiotherapy and chemotherapy are personalized to improve survival rates for brain cancer patients.
Ken-Pin Hwang of MD Anderson and Jon Tamir of UT Austin's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Oden Institute will use mathematical modeling and massively parallel distributed computing to make prostate MR imaging faster and more accurate to reduce the incidence of unnecessary or inaccurate biopsies.
Xiaodong Zhang of MD Anderson and Hang Liu of TACC will advance both the planning and delivery of proton therapy via a platform that combines mathematical algorithms and high-performance computing to further personalize these already highly tailored treatments.
Tinsley Oden and Prashant Jha of the Oden Institute and David Fuentes of MD Anderson will integrate a new mechanistic model of tumor growth with an advanced form of MRI to reveal underlying metabolic alterations in tumors and lead to new treatments for patients.

"These five research teams, made up of a cross section of expertise from all three stakeholders, represent the beginning of something truly special," says Jaffray in a release. "Our experts are advancing cancer research and care, and we are committed to working with our colleagues at the Oden Institute and TACC to bring together their computational expertise with our data and insights."

Later this month, the five teams will log on to a virtual retreat along with academic and government thought leaders to further collaborate and intertwine their research and expertise.

"Texas is globally recognized for its excellence in computing and in cancer research. This collaboration forges a new path to international leadership through the combination of its strengths in both," says Karen Willcox, director of the Oden Institute. "We are thrilled that leaders in government, industry and academia see the potential of this unique Texan partnership. We're looking forward to a virtual retreat on October 29 to continue to build upon this realization."

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Rice University announces leader of new materials and nanotechnology institute

at the helm

A recently established institute at Rice University has revealed its new leader.

The Rice Advanced Materials Institute has named Lane Martin as director. Martin will also serve as Welch Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering in the George R. Brown School of Engineering. He begins both roles on July 1.

“Lane is everything we expect our faculty to be — hard-working, committed to excellence, dedicated to students and collaborative across disciplines,” says Howard R. Hughes Provost Amy Dittmar in a news release. “I look forward to seeing Rice faculty and students reap the benefits of his leadership.”

Prior to his appointment at Rice, Martin was the chancellor’s professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as chair of the materials science and engineering department, faculty scientist in the material sciences division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and co-director of the Collaborative for Hierarchical Agile and Responsive Materials, according to the release.

“I had the privilege of mentoring Lane when he was a doctoral student at Berkeley,” says Ramamoorthy Ramesh, vice president for research, professor of materials science and nanoengineering and professor of physics and astronomy. “He is a gifted scientist with the boldness and vision to build this new institute into a research powerhouse.”

The new institute was created following a $100 million gift from Houston-based Welch Foundation. It will bring together chemistry, materials science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to revolutionize the future of industry.

“This institute will keep Rice at the forefront of high-impact research related to energy transition, advanced materials and future computing,” says Luay Nakhleh, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the school, in the release. “It will empower our faculty and students to help solve some of the most pressing problems of our day.”

Report: Texas rises through the ranks of most innovative states

moving on up

The Lone Star State has again taken a step up on an annual report that ranks the most and least innovative states in the country — this time cracking the top 15.

Texas ranked No. 15 in personal finance site WalletHub's 2023’s Most and Least Innovative States ranking. It's a steady improvement for the state, which ranked No. 16 in 2022 and No. 17 in 2021.

The report analyzed the 50 states and the District of Columbia and how each performed across 22 key metrics, including population of STEM professionals, venture capital investment activity, number of technology companies, patents per capita, and more. The data was pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Science Foundation, National Center for Education Statistics, United States Patent and Trademark Office, and other records.

Here's how Texas performed at a glance:

No. 18 for share of STEM professionals
No. 16 for projected STEM job demand by 2030
No. 25 for eighth grade math and science performance
No. 21 – for share of science and engineering graduates aged 25 or older
No. 13 – for share of technology companies
No. 31 – for R&D spending per capita
No. 18 – venture capital funding per capita

For the 11th year, Texas won Site Selection Magazine's Governor's Cup, the governor's office announced earlier this year. The award, which Texas has won 19 times since its inception in 1978, recognizes the nation’s top-performing state for job-creating business relocations and expansions.

"Texas truly is America’s economic engine, and we stand apart as a model for the nation. When choosing where to relocate or expand their businesses, more and more innovative industry leaders find themselves at home in our state," Governor Greg Abbott says in a news release about the award.

"I congratulate the exceptional economic development teams at the local, regional, and state level who have worked so diligently to attract and retain these growing businesses and the jobs they create in diverse communities across this great state," he continues.

The most innovative states included the District of Columbia, which ranked at No. 1, followed by Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, and California, respectively. The least innovative state was identified as Mississippi, followed by Louisiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Arkansas, respectively.

Source: WalletHub

Access to quality education is a significant contributor to each state's innovation economy, the experts say in the report.

"Investing in education, particularly K-12 but also at the University level, it is no accident that innovative ecosystems develop in states with strong education systems and research universities," says David L. Deeds, professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. "These institutions build strong capable modern workforces that attract capital, and jobs and create innovations. The benefits do not happen overnight, in fact, they take years if not decades, but consider what The UC’s or the University of Texas at Austin have meant for the development of premier innovative ecosystems."

Investor advocates now is the time to position Houston as a leading biomanufacturing hub

houston innovators podcast episode 178

Houston has all the ingredients to be a successful synthetic biology hub, says Veronica Wu. She believes so strongly in this that she relocated to Houston from Silicon Valley just over a year ago to start a venture capital firm dedicated to the field. Since then, she's doubled down on her passion for Houston leading in biotech — especially when it comes to one uniquely Houston opportunity: biomanufacturing.

While Houston's health care innovation scene is actively deploying synthetic biology applications, Wu points to Houston-based Solugen, a plant-based chemical producer, as an example of what Houston has to offer at-scale industrial biomanufacturing. Houston has the workforce and the physical space available for more of these types of biomanufacturing plants, which have a huge potential to move the needle on reducing carbon emissions.

"This is really fundamental technology that's going to change the paradigm and whole dialogue of how we are making a significant impact in reducing a carbon footprint and improving sustainability," says Wu, founder and managing partner of First Bight Ventures, on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

Several aspects — government funding, corporate interest, advances in technology — have converged to make it an ideal time for synthetic biology innovators and investors, Wu explains on the show, and she has an idea of what Houston needs to secure its spot as a leader in the space: The BioWell.

First introduced at a Houston Tech Rodeo event at the Texas Medical Center's Innovation Factory, The BioWell is a public-private partnership that aims to provide access to pilot and lab space, mentorship and programming, and more support that biomanufacturing innovators critically need.

"The way we envision The BioWell is it will provide a holistic, curated support for startups to be able to get across the Valley of Death," Wu says, explaining that startups transitioning from research and development into commercialization need extra support. The BioWell will provide that, as well as allow more engagement from corporations, investors, and other players.

Now that her plans for The BioWell have been announced, Wu is looking for those who want to be a part of it.

She shares more about her mission and what's next for First Bight Ventures on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

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