This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) under the Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health program (CFDA 93.286) provides $581,703 in funding to The General Hospital Corporation, doing business as Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), to develop novel approaches to enrich and detect cell-free DNA (cfDNA) for improved cancer diagnostics. The research aims to engineer monoclonal...
This $427,095 Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) under the Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research program (CFDA 93.394) supports the development of a novel microfluidic droplet-based platform (MDP) technology to generate and analyze a 3D biomimetic multicellular immunogenic tumor model. The goal is to establish multiple levels of hypoxia within the tumor-chip, investigate spatiotemporal interaction between the tumor microenvironment and cancer-immune cells during...
This Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (CFDA 93.395 - Cancer Treatment Research) provides $2,104,477 to The General Hospital Corporation, doing business as Massachusetts General Hospital, to elucidate resistance mechanisms and enhance response to immune checkpoint blockade in central nervous system metastases from breast cancer. The research aims to characterize the co-evolution of cancer and the immune system over time and anatomical location during immunotherapy by...
This $284,201.82 Project Grant from the National Cancer Institute, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, will fund research into malignant cell engagement in immune circuits of human colorectal cancer. The Broad Institute, Inc. will utilize single cell RNA sequencing data from over 700,000 malignant, immune, and stromal cells from colorectal cancer patients to test the hypothesis that malignant cells expressing interferon-stimulated genes acutely promote anti-tumor immunity,...
The federal Project Grant award from the Defense Health Agency under the Military Medical Research and Development program (CFDA 12.420) provides $1,480,488 to Brigham & Women's Hospital Inc. to research the combination of mRNA nanotherapy with standard antiangiogenic/immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The research project runs from September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2026. As part of this effort, Massachusetts General Hospital will conduct preclinical studies to evaluate the...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) under the Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) provides $298,999 to Numentus Technologies Inc. to develop a high-throughput, high-content imaging platform for the analysis of extracellular vesicles (EVs). The goal is to create a novel technology that can rapidly identify and characterize specific subpopulations of EVs, such as exosomes from human cancer cells and outer membrane...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (CFDA 93.394 - Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research) provides $231,413 to The General Hospital Corporation (Massachusetts General Hospital) to develop a novel SPINEX platform for rapid, high-throughput isolation and processing of extracellular vesicles (EVs) from clinical plasma samples. The SPINEX technology leverages dual-mode chromatography and disc-based fluidics to efficiently separate EVs from lipoproteins, enabling...
This federal Project Grant award of $882,000, provided by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) under the Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health program (CFDA 93.286), aims to engineer hybrid extracellular vesicles (HEVs) derived from natural killer (NK) cells and combine them with liposomes containing anticancer drugs and imaging dyes. The key objectives are to: 1) engineer the NK cell-derived extracellular vesicles...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), provides $858,186 to The General Hospital Corporation (doing business as Massachusetts General Hospital) to conduct research aimed at decoding the mechanisms underlying immune-related myocarditis, a fatal adverse event associated with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) cancer therapies. The 5-year project will utilize...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (CFDA 93.395 - Cancer Treatment Research) provides funding to The General Hospital Corporation, doing business as Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), to conduct a Phase I clinical trial testing a novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for the treatment of glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer. The grant, totaling $652,725.00 and running from September 19, 2024 through August 31, 2029, supports the development and...
This $516,355.74 Project Grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, aims to develop new technologies for immunotherapy monitoring and liquid biopsy through the Cancer Research Manpower federal grant program. Specifically, the Massachusetts General Hospital will utilize the funding to create an ultra-high sensitive platform that can map single extracellular vesicles to parent cells at the single particle level and apply it to profile tumor immune microenvironments. This will allow for repeat sampling and monitoring of changes in immune cell phenotypes during immunotherapy treatment. Additionally, the grant supports developing single extracellular vesicle protein sequencing, ultra-fast multiplexed live cell fluorescence imaging, and single cell-single extracellular vesicle mapping to discover new molecular information on cell-cell communication through vesicle secretion. The outcomes have potential to provide robust biomarkers for disease diagnostics and guidance to optimize patient outcomes.