Rice University receives CPRIT funding to advance cancer research

New funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) will help Rice University advance cancer research on several fronts, from strengthening a core genetic engineering facility that serves researchers across Texas to supporting new studies in cancer immunotherapy and ovarian cancer.

The awards also include funding that could help Rice attract up to three leading researchers to its faculty.

Many people have been touched by cancer, including my father, who benefited from immunotherapy treatments that gave us more time with him. Rice is grateful for CPRIT's support to bring more researchers to Texas to develop more precise, effective treatments, as well as CPRIT's ongoing investment in the needed infrastructure."

Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost

The investment builds on a period of significant progress in cancer treatment. In the U.S., the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers has risen to 70%, up from 49% in the mid-1970s, according to a report from the American Cancer Society. Some of the biggest gains have been noted in outcomes for advanced cancers once considered largely untreatable.

Newer approaches such as targeted therapies and immunotherapies are significant factors driving this progress. Among the most promising examples are cell-based treatments that harness a patient's own immune system to fight cancer. For instance, therapies using genetically engineered varieties of specialized white blood cells, known as T cells, are an immunotherapy approach that has yielded results against some blood cancers.

Three of the newly funded projects at Rice support that broader shift toward more precise, biology-driven treatments: Anna-Karin Gustavsson, Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator, assistant professor of chemistry and CPRIT Scholar, will lead a project on live visualization of biological responses to inform next-generation radiation therapy; Peter Lillehoj, associate professor and Shankle Chair in Mechanical Engineering, will lead research aimed at improving cancer-fighting T cells; and Cynthia Reinhart-King, department chair and John W. Cox Chair of Bioengineering, is leading work examining the role age plays in how ovarian cancer spreads.

A $2 million core facility renewal award will expand Rice's Genetic Design and Engineering Center, or GDEC. Initially established in 2022 with a $4 million CPRIT award, the center serves researchers at Rice, the Texas Medical Center and other institutions, providing a centralized hub for sourcing DNA tools used in cancer research and other biomedical studies.

The GDEC combines expertise in synthetic biology and genome engineering with robotic automation to perform work that would otherwise require substantial time and effort from individual laboratories.

"This CPRIT grant will allow a major expansion of the core facility by adding an automated mammalian cell hub to GDEC, enabling the generation of new cell models for cancer research and supporting collaborative projects that require automated handling of mammalian cells," said Gang Bao, Rice's Foyt Family Professor of Bioengineering and a CPRIT Scholar. "This will generate a significant impact on cancer research."

The GDEC is led by Bao, together with Caleb Bashor, assistant professor of bioengineering, and Elizabeth Gardner, assistant research professor of bioengineering.