Located just a little way down the hill from the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the Zangle lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering is working on new technologies to choose the most effective therapies for a given patient.
One project we are excited about is focused on a new approach to measure the growth of cancer cells and predict which drugs may be most beneficial to patients with advanced metastatic breast cancer. Current drug screening methods requires at least one month to obtain tumor drug response, which is too long for patients with advanced disease. Our approach is based on a sensitive microscopy technique developed by the Zangle lab that weighs individual cancer cells with light as they respond to a panel of drugs. We are working together with clinicians and basic scientists at HCI to demonstrate that our approach works, with a goal of predicting clinical outcome within several days, a large improvement over the weeks or months required by existing approaches.
We rely on the support of HCI and patient participation in research studies, so thanks very much for helping us improve treatment decisions for future patients.