For many of these patients, care has long meant pain and disfigurement alongside other severe side effects, rather than receiving treatment that addresses the disease itself. This new ARPA-H award marks a potential turning point.
Lead researcher Susan Napier Thomas, Woodruff Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB), has collaborated with her colleague J. Brandon Dixon, Woodruff Professor in the Woodruff School and IBB, for more than a decade on this project. The research partners are driven by the lack of meaningful treatment options available to patients.
“Funding support at this level is unprecedented,” Thomas said. “It finally gives us a chance to move beyond symptom management and toward real treatment. We’re addressing an underserved population with a huge unmet need.”
The lymphatic system helps keep fluid moving through the body and plays a key role in immune health. When it does not function properly, fluid can build up in tissues, causing chronic pain and other long-term complications. Thomas noted that despite its toll on patients, lymphatic disease has lagged decades behind cardiovascular care in both treatment and research investment.
“We are excited about this groundbreaking project in lymphatic engineering,” said Andrés García, IBB executive director. “By uniting interdisciplinary expertise, this work addresses long-standing challenges in lymphatic disease and moves meaningful solutions closer to the patients who need them most.”
In the coming years, Thomas, Dixon, and their research partners will work toward an initial human trial, with an early focus on rare lymphatic conditions in children, as well as chronic disease in adults.
“This award reflects Georgia Tech’s growing leadership in using engineering to solve some of healthcare’s biggest challenges,” said Carolyn Seepersad, Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. School Chair and professor in the Woodruff School. “It reinforces the Institute’s role in advancing innovations that improve patient care and strengthen Georgia’s position as a hub for health technology and biomedical innovation.”
The award was made through ARPA-H’s Groundbreaking Lymphatic Interventions and Drug Exploration (GLIDE) program led by Dr. Kimberley Steele.
This research was funded, in part, by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) under Agreement No. 1AY2AX000137-01. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. government.
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“Georgia Tech and UGA's collective commitment to advancing science and technology exceeds the intensity of our athletic rivalry,” Fedorov said. “Together, we’re advancing cell and therapy biomanufacturing to develop lifesaving treatments for the most devastating diseases.”
Georgia Tech’s Francisco Robles and UGA’s Lohitash Karumbaiah are using manufactured T cells to target cancer. Robles, who leads the Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy Lab in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, developed quantitative Oblique Back-illumination Microscopy (qOBM) to monitor tumor growth in real time. The method allows scientists to visualize patient-derived glioblastoma cell clusters generated in the Karumbaiah Lab, tracking tumor structure and behavior at various stages.
“Assessing therapeutic potency is often complex, costly, and ineffective for solid tumors,” Karumbaiah said. “qOBM simplifies the process by providing real-time, label-free monitoring of therapeutic efficacy against 3D solid tumors.”
The work could help doctors personalize cancer treatments by providing early, detailed signs of whether a therapy is working.
“This technique is more compact and affordable and lets us watch T cells attack cell cultures in real time,” Robles said. “This breakthrough could transform how we study disease and screen new treatments.”
A Playbook for Local Healthcare
Created in 2007 by the National Institutes of Health, Georgia CTSA is one of several NIH-funded national partnerships advancing new health therapeutics and practices. Since 2017, it has comprised UGA, Georgia Tech, Emory, and the Morehouse School of Medicine. The alliance’s reach extends far beyond campus borders, bringing together researchers, clinicians, professional societies, and community and industry partners to identify local health challenges and translate research into practical solutions.
And out of this alliance have come many collaborative studies among CTSA’s members.
One, the Georgia Health Landscape Dashboard, is a tool to identify local health gaps and connect regional health professionals or policymakers with the researchers who can best address their community’s challenges. UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences Associate Professors Alison Berg and Dee Warmath, along with community health engagement coordinator Courtney Still Brown, are working with Georgia Tech’s Jon Duke, director of the Center for Health Analytics and Informatics at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and a principal research scientist in the School of Interactive Computing.
The dashboard has already helped match researchers with communities by combining epidemiological data with “community voice” insights through surveys of residents and local leaders.
For example, when examining diabetes data, the dashboard indicates Randolph County has the state’s highest prevalence, despite declining by about 8% between 2021-24. Meanwhile, Treutlen County’s rate increased 29.2% during the same period. Perhaps Treutlen’s need for diabetic care is a growing concern, while Randolph’s is being addressed. And perhaps Hancock County, which ranks diabetes its top priority in the community voice category, is in search of immediate solutions.
“The Landscape Dashboard is a fantastic example of how the unique expertise found at Georgia Tech and UGA can be brought together to create something truly valuable for all Georgia,” Duke said. “By bringing together a range of data sources and health analytics approaches, this collaboration has created a tool that delivers novel insights into health, community, and policy across the state.”
Supported by UGA Cooperative Extension and the Biomedical and Translational Sciences Institute, the project leverages a network of agents in every county across the state. Warmath said the project’s strength lies in its ability to connect research with real-world needs.
“To build a community-responsive ecosystem for biomedical research, scientists must recognize local needs, share progress with communities to foster trust and acceptance, recruit clinicians and industry partners, and strengthen the relationships between patient and caregiver,” Warmath said.
Teaming Up for Maternal Health
Warmath and a team of researchers at UGA, Georgia Tech, and Emory are also collaborating on an NIH-funded project uniting experts in maternal health, biostatistics, and consumer science to explore how wearable technologies could improve delivery-room care.
During childbirth, clinicians monitor countless maternal and fetal vitals — contractions, heart rates, oxygen levels, kidney function, and more. What new insights, the researchers asked, could advanced wearable technologies offer in the delivery room, and what barriers might prevent their use?
Using nationwide surveys and focus groups, the team gathered information from a representative sample of pregnant, postpartum, and reproductive-age women, as well as healthcare professionals, to examine acceptance of wearable health technologies during labor and delivery. In their analysis of this rich data source, the team is identifying key variables that reveal gaps in technology acceptance and the unique needs of diverse maternal populations.
Each partner institution brings unique expertise. At Emory, principal investigator Suchitra Chandrasekaran contributes clinical insights from direct patient care. At UGA, Warmath applies her knowledge in consumer science to analyze end-user motivation, attitudes, and behaviors. At Georgia Tech, experts like Sarah Farmer in the Center for Advanced Communications Policy’s Home Lab facilitate large-scale data collection.
With data collection now complete, the team is analyzing results to inform future design and deployment of wearable technologies.
“Each school has a different perspective,” Farmer said. “It’s not as simple as one school does this but doesn’t do that. Each has their expertise, but they offer different perspectives and different resources that, when pooled, can make our research that much more effective.”
Whether advancing maternal health, mapping Georgia’s health needs, or engineering next-generation therapies, UGA and Georgia Tech continue to prove that collaboration is Georgia’s strongest tradition. Further, the undergraduate and graduate students who work in these labs and others represent the state’s highly skilled workforce of tomorrow.
“When our institutions work together, Georgia wins,” Warmath said.
— By David Mitchell
Georgia Tech and UGA are teaming up to tackle big health challenges, from cancer and bone repair to maternal care and community health. By combining their strengths, these schools are turning research into real-world solutions that make life better for Georgians.
]]>When a Georgia Tech-led project received a contract award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), it was for a bold idea with aggressive metrics. And it wasn’t guaranteed money. The team, led by biomedical engineer Gabe Kwong, had to deliver on its vision. Doing so could transform cancer screening and care, leading to one-size-fits-all tests that detect multiple cancers before they’re visible on CT or PET scans.
It’s a big goal, but that’s the point of ARPA-H. The agency funds staggeringly difficult healthcare innovation ideas that require major investment to succeed.
Two years into the $49.5 million project, Kwong and the team from Georgia Tech, Columbia University, and Mount Sinai Health System has crossed a critical threshold.
They’ve built the first tool able to measure enzyme activity around cancer tumors and healthy cells. And they’ve deployed it to understand the unique signatures for tumors from 14 different kinds of cancer.
That data is powering the first version of a cancer “atlas.” Like a geographical atlas, it will offer directions to each kind of tumor, allowing scientists to design sensors that follow the map and detect cancer tumors when they’re still small.
“If I want to deliver a sensor to a particular region inside the body, right now, there's no way of directing it. We give it systemically, and it basically infuses all tissues all the time,” said Kwong, Robert A. Milton Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. “What's powerful is that we’re now defining tissue sites with a specific molecular ‘barcode.’ Then if a sensor is given systemically, it should only turn on when the barcode matches the local tissue.”
Read more about the project on the College of Engineering website.
Purpose Built for AI Discovery
Nexus is Georgia Tech’s next-generation supercomputer, replacing the HIVE. Most operational high-performance computing systems utilized for research were designed before the explosion in Machine Learning and AI. This revolution has already shown successes for scientific research and data analysis in many domains, but the compute power, complex connectivity, and data storage needs for these systems have limited their access to the academic research community. The Nexus supercomputer design process retained a robust HPC system as a base while integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning and large-scale data science analysis from the ground up.
Expert Support for Faculty and Researchers
The Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) and the College of Computing house the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Science and Engineering (ARTISAN) group. This team has collective experience in working with national computational, cloud, commercial and institutional resources for computational activities, and decades of experience in scientific tools that aid in assisting both teaching and research faculty. Nexus is the next logical step, bringing together everything they’ve learned to build a national resource optimized for the future of AI-driven science.
Principal Research Scientist for the ARTISAN team, Suresh Marru, highlighted the need for this new resource, “AI is a core part of the Nexus vision. Today, researchers often spend more time setting up experiments, managing data, or figuring out how to run jobs on remote clusters than doing science. With Nexus, we’re flipping that script. By embedding AI into the platform, we help automate routine tasks, suggest optimal ways to run simulations, and even assist in generating input or analyzing results. This means researchers can move faster from question to insight. Instead of wrestling with infrastructure, they can focus on discovery.”
An Accessible AI Resource for GT & US Scientific Research
90% of Nexus capacity will be made available to the national research community through the NSF Advanced Computing Systems & Services (ACSS) program. Researchers from across the country, at universities, labs, and institutions of all sizes, will have access to this next-generation AI-ready supercomputer. For Georgia Tech research faculty and staff, the new system has multiple benefits:
Interim Executive Director of IDEaS and Regents' Professor David Sherrill notes, "Nexus brings Georgia Tech's leadership in research computing to a whole new level. It will be the first NSF Category I Supercomputer hosted on Georgia Tech's campus. The Nexus hardware and software will boost research in the foundations of AI, and applications of AI in science and engineering."
McShan, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been awarded a $1.4 million CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support this research.
“Protein-lipid assemblies carry out all sorts of biological functions, and harnessing their interactions could lead to powerful tools and treatments — but historically, they’ve been difficult to study,” McShan says. “Building resources for researchers and making this information accessible are critical steps in developing this field. This CAREER grant will enable me to expand the current knowledge base, while also allowing me to develop a class that will train the next generation of researchers, which is hugely important to me.”
The NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program is a five-year grant designed to help promising researchers establish a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in their field. Known as CAREER awards, the grants are NSF’s most prestigious funding for early-career faculty.
Crucial for nearly all biological processes, lipid-protein interactions play a key role in everything from immune responses to energy storage — but what drives their interactions has historically been difficult to map and understand.
McShan will use the CAREER grant to expand that knowledge base, experimenting in the lab to characterize protein-lipid interactions, and developing computational tools that can predict those interactions. The work will include an in-depth study of how lipids interact with different families of proteins that are important for immune system function.
“Right now, understanding protein-lipid assemblies is expensive in both time and lab materials,” McShan says. “My goal is to create computer models that can predict how these biomolecular interactions occur, what they look like, and how they contribute to cellular functions.”
The new model would allow researchers to quickly and inexpensively ‘experiment’ with molecules on a computer, vastly expanding the amount of research that could be conducted.
The project builds on McShan’s recent publication in the Nature-family journal Communications Chemistry, which showcased BioDolphin — a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive, and annotated database of protein-lipid interactions that are all integrated into a user-friendly web server and freely accessible to all.
It’s also adjacent to research funded by a Curci Grant from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, which McShan was previously awarded for research on cutting-edge cancer treatments that involved identifying new cancer lipid signatures in tumor cells, and characterizing known cancer lipid antigens.
Additionally, the CAREER grant will support McShan’s initiatives to train the next generation of researchers through a new class centered around hands-on laboratory research and peer mentorship. Students will have the opportunity to pick a protein-lipid assembly, study it using computational and experimental biophysical methods, develop testable hypotheses, and — if successful — publish their results in peer reviewed journals.
The class will also pair undergraduate and graduate students into research teams. “I’m excited to see how a peer mentoring approach will add depth to the class,” McShan shares, explaining that graduate students will gain valuable mentoring experience in a collaborative research environment. “This is very different from typical mentoring experiences many graduate students have, which tend to be more along the lines of a TA experience rather than collaborating on hands-on research.”
“This type of class, to my knowledge, hasn’t been offered before, and there’s a lot of research that I’m doing to lay the groundwork for it,” McShan adds. “Hopefully, it can not only introduce students to lipid-based research — something typically lacking in many biochemistry curricula — but also to the type of collaborative mentorship we want to foster in research.”
]]>Contact: Jess Hunt-Ralston
]]>Middlemen get a bad rap for adding cost and complications to an operation. So, eliminating the go-betweens can reduce expense and simplify a process, increasing efficiency and consumer happiness.
James Dahlman and his research team have been thinking along those same lines for stem cell treatments. They’ve created a technique that eliminates noisome middlemen and could lead to new, less-invasive treatments for blood disorders and genetic diseases. It sidesteps the discomfort and risks of current treatments, making life easier for patients.
“This would be an alternative to invasive hematopoietic stem cell therapies — we could just give you an IV drip,” said Dahlman, McCamish Early Career Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. “It simplifies the process and reduces the risks to patients. That’s why this work is important.”
Dahlman and a team of investigators from Georgia Tech, Emory University, and the University of California, Davis, published their approach in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are like parent cells. Residing in the bone marrow, they produce all types of cells needed to sustain the blood and immune systems. Their versatility makes HSCs a valuable therapeutic tool in treating genetic blood diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, immune deficiencies, and some cancers.
HSC therapies usually involve extracting cells from the patient’s bone marrow and re-engineering them in a lab. Meanwhile, the patient endures chemotherapy to help prepare their body to receive the modified HSCs.
“These therapies are effective but also hard on the patients,” Dahlman said. “Patients undergo chemotherapy to wipe out their immune systems so the body will accept the therapeutic cells without a fight. The procedure can be life-threatening. We’re hoping to change that.”
HSCs can also be modified directly inside the body. The procedure uses lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to carry genetic instructions to the stem cells. The LNPs have targeting ligands attached — molecules designed to find specific target cells. Precisely engineering them adds layers of time, complexity, and cost to the process. They are, like extraction from bone marrow and chemotherapy, another middleman.
The researchers wanted something simpler. They found it in a specific nanoparticle called LNP67.
“Unlike other nanoparticle designs, this one doesn’t require a targeting ligand,” Dahlman said. “It’s chemically simple, which means it’s easier to manufacture and opens the door to eventually scaling production, like mRNA vaccines.”
The key to LNP67’s success is its ability to dodge the liver, the body’s primary blood filter. Foreign invaders, even helpful invaders delivered through an IV as medicine, can be captured by a healthy liver.
“The liver absorbs almost everything,” Dahlman said. “But, by reducing what it captures by even as little as 10 percent, we can double delivery to other tissues where the nanoparticles and their payloads are needed.”
The researchers developed 128 unique nanoparticles, narrowing the list down to 105 LNPs that didn’t have targeting ligands. These were ultimately screened and evaluated for their performance in delivering genetic instructions (in the form of mRNA) effectively and safely.
LNP67 emerged as the best performer thanks to its stealthy design. For example, the surface is designed to repel proteins and other molecules that would mark the LNP for capture by the liver. This feature helped the particles circulate more evenly in the body and reach the HSCs.
“We achieved low-dose delivery without a target ligand, which is exciting,” Dahlman said. “This is something we’ve been working toward for years, and I’m very happy we got there.”
Citation: Hyejin Kim, Ryan Zenhausern, Kara Gentry, Liming Lian, Sebastian G. Huayamares, Afsane Radmand, David Loughrey, Ananda Podilapu, Marine Z. C. Hatit, Huanzhen Ni, Andrea Li, Aram Shajii, Hannah E. Peck, Keyi Han, Xuanwen Hua, Shu Jia, Michele Martinez, Charles Lee, Philip J. Santangelo, Alice Tarantal, James E. Dahlman. Lipid Nanoparticle Study, Nov. 2024, Nature Biotechnology.
Funding: This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants UL1TR002378, UH3-TR002855, U42 OD027094, and TL1DK136047; National Science Foundation grant 0923395. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.
Competing Interests: James Dahlman, Marine Z. C. Hatit, and Huanzhen Ni have filed a provisional patent related to this manuscript (US patent application number 63/632,354).
Eng is a Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Fellow. Her research compares rover and orbital datasets of Mars to increase the spatial resolution of quantitative geologic mapping.
“I am excited to receive this award as it validates the importance of my research and my abilities as a scientist,” says Eng.
Nominated by her advisor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Assistant Professor Frances Rivera-Hernández, Eng is also a part of Georgia Tech's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute and Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research.
“Alivia is an exceptional graduate student and planetary scientist,” says Rivera-Hernández. “Her curiosity, passion, and question-driven approach have sparked multiple new projects at Georgia Tech and led my research group in exciting new directions. Beyond her research, Alivia is deeply committed to community engagement, aiming to inspire future generations to pursue careers in planetary geology. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with her.”
Izykowicz’s research focuses on synthesizing nanoparticles designed to target and retain anti-cancer drugs in both primary and metastatic tumors of various cancers. Her research tackles the challenge of treating metastatic lesions, which are difficult to target due to their small size and abundance.
“I am deeply passionate about my work because it addresses an issue that has plagued humanity for centuries,” says Izykowicz. “My research investigates the complexities of metastatic cancer, building on the knowledge of those who came before me to pave the way toward a potential cure.”
She was nominated for the award by M.G. Finn, who serves as a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the James A. Carlos Family Chair for Pediatric Technology.
“Marrissa is a wonderful student and colleague — always willing to do whatever is needed to advance her studies,” says Finn. “Her research is tremendously exciting, working with collaborator Stephen Housley on nanoparticles that can deliver medications directly to cancerous tumors. The project involves chemistry, cell biology, immunology, and analytical biochemistry, and Marrissa does it all with great dedication and expertise.”
Mobille is pursuing a Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, specializing in computational neuroscience.
“I am passionate about my research because it sheds light on how the brain’s structure and abilities are related quantitatively,” says Mobille. “It targets a deeper understanding of how information is processed in networks of neurons, which may influence how computational devices are designed in the future.”
Mobille serves as chair of the community impact committee of the Georgia Tech/Emory Computational Neural-engineering Training Program (CNTP) and is a past recipient of Georgia Tech’s InQuBATE Training grant.
School of Mathematics Assistant Professor Hannah Choi, who advises Mobille, states: “Zach is driven by curiosity and determined to solve complex research problems. He has consistently impressed me with his creativity and motivation in computational neuroscience. Zach proposes innovative ideas, is never afraid of learning new techniques, and takes initiative in his research. I am thrilled that the ARCS fellowship has recognized his qualities as an independent and creative researcher.”
Pederson uses computer simulations to study chemistry at solid/liquid interfaces at the molecular scale.
“Computational modeling across length- and time-scales is a powerful technique for gaining insight into chemical and physical processes,” says Pederson. “With my research, I hope to promote wider adoption of these multi-scale computational techniques to enable the design of cleaner and safer chemical processes.”
In addition to his research work, Pederson helped organize and run ComSciCon-ATL 2024, an interdisciplinary science communications conference for Southeast STEM graduate students.
“John is an outstanding researcher and problem-solver,” says Jessie McDaniel, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry who nominated Pederson. ”He has contributed substantially to software and method development efforts that form the core of our group’s work on studying chemical reaction mechanisms in complex environments related to electrochemistry and surface chemistry. John exemplifies excellence in all facets of research, scholarship, and service.”
]]>But a busy travel schedule is nothing new for Rogers. Diagnosed with hepatoblastoma at the age of 3, he spent over a decade traveling between Augusta, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, with lengthy hospital stays in between, undergoing treatment for the rare childhood liver cancer.
Given a prognosis with a "one-in-a-million" chance of survival, Rogers had two liver transplants before the cancer spread to his lungs and brain. In total, he endured 50 surgeries before his 13th birthday, and it was during the countless trips to Atlanta that he dreamed of two things — attending Georgia Tech and making a difference for kids facing similar struggles.
Unlike chemotherapy or other procedures, Rogers found radiation therapy to be a painless experience, in part thanks to the radiation therapists administering the treatment.
"They may not have thought much of it at the time, but in those moments, by playing with me, making me laugh, making me a Spiderman radiation mask, they helped me forget — even for a second — that I had cancer and helped me enjoy life. I think about that every day. I hope to one day change a child's life like my therapists did for me,” he said.
Now 18 years cancer-free, Rogers earned a bachelor's degree in radiation therapy from Augusta University. A program director told him about Georgia Tech's medical physics program, and, since arriving at the Institute in 2021, he has sought hands-on experience in the field. Completing the clinical portion of the program through a partnership with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Rogers learned each role within the rotation.
"From booting up machines and checking on patients to everything else, I just started wanting to come in every day. I'd go in for free just because I love what I'm doing," he said.
Rogers wasn't immune to the stresses of everyday college life, but he approached them with a positive perspective.
"My parents told me that there's always a light at the end of every tunnel, and it's always going to be worth it in the end. So, I will keep telling myself and everybody else that when they're going through a hard time, keep pushing,” he said. “Things may be painful and stressful now, but think about what you will achieve in the future and the people you will help get through battles of their own. That will always keep me motivated."
Rogers isn't done with medical appointments, but with each yearly checkup, he never tires of hearing the words he hopes to deliver in his career: "All clear."
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