Nanotechnology is increasingly important to the development of treatments for cancer. But to succeed, clinicians need to understand it.

A National Institutes of Health grant to Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center will help train future medical professionals to translate these tools to the clinic.

The five-year, $2.6 million award to Rice bioengineer Gang Bao and Konstantin Sokolov, a professor of imaging physics at MD Anderson and an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Rice, continues an NIH T32 training program established in 2015 to educate future leaders who have specific interests in nano-enabled cancer applications.

At Rice, the program is administered by the university’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering.

Bao and Sokolov, co-directors of the program, cite the challenge presented by the rapid pace of technology, noting the unique promise of nanotechnology to provide “otherwise unattainable solutions to cancer management, including very early cancer detection, accurate molecular-specific diagnosis and treatment that diminishes side effects.”

“We are very excited about this T32 award and the opportunity to work with MD Anderson to train outstanding pre- and postdoctoral fellows who will make significant contributions to the development and translation of nanotechnology-based approaches to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer,” said Bao, the department chair and Foyt Family Professor of Bioengineering, a professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering, and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar.

“This interdisciplinary T32 program will fill an important gap in training future leaders in nanoengineering and oncological applications,” he said.

Read more: https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/rice-trains-postdocs-nano-cancer-future

Author: MIKE WILLIAMS