To target and treat a disease, we first need to be able to find specific cells, which is difficult because cells can move around the body and become ‘hidden’.
A new round of funding will support advanced technology invented at Case Western Reserve University that enhances the company’s ability to find therapeutic cells and cells for diseases such as cancer.
Currently, when tracking cancer cells and cell-based therapies, we don’t know where all the cells go, so we don’t know what types of processes they will target or how the treatments will improve. ”
Susan Brady Kalnay, Sally S. Morley Brain Tumor Research Designated Professor and Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine
Toward this goal, the National Institutes of Health jointly awarded a $2.5 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to Brady-Kalnay and BioInVision Inc.
The Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve spinout company was co-founded by Debashish Roy, a double alumnus and chief executive officer, and David Wilson, the Robert J. Herbold Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology and the company’s chief technology officer. Madhu Gargesha, BioInVision’s principal investigator on this research grant, is a former postdoctoral fellow in the CWRU Department of Biomedical Engineering.
The technology is intended to be useful in a variety of applications, including the testing of cancer drugs, cell-based therapeutics, including immunotherapy and drug delivery. Brady-Kalnay said the technology can also be used to evaluate contrast agents and gene expression.
SBIR grants support small and medium-sized businesses that collaborate with universities for continued research and commercialization, generating revenue for both businesses and universities while fostering local economic development.
More specifically, the new grant will fund research that promotes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and “machine learning” software to identify healthy and diseased tissues and organs from three-dimensional volumes in various models. The CryoViz cryo-imaging device is a highly automated system that uses microscopy, robotics, imaging, and advanced software to create high-resolution, three-dimensional images of biological samples with single-cell sensitivity.
“If you try to do this the traditional way, you might need millions of tissue sections,” Brady-Kalnai says. “With new AI algorithms being developed by BioInVision, imaging an entire mouse (including identification of all organs) can take several hours.”
The researchers also plan to employ an AI-based “virtual staining” approach to assess body tissues at the single-cell level. New technologies enable the tracking of individual cells, such as migratory and metastatic cancer cells and T cells, and the evaluation of cell-based treatments such as immunotherapy.
“The computer can determine when it detects ‘glowing’ fluorescent cells, such as metastatic tumor cells in the lungs,” said Brady Kalnay. “Tissue sections from that area are automatically saved so you can go back and study the tissue in detail at the cellular and molecular level.”
David Wald, a co-investigator on the grant and a professor of pathology at CWRU, is studying where T cells end up in different organs during new treatments like immunotherapy. Doing so increases its ability to target diseased cells.
More broadly, this grant represents the importance of industry-academia collaboration in supporting technology development and commercialization in Ohio. It also demonstrates the success of spin-out companies and Case Western Reserve’s role in developing STEM professionals in the biotechnology industry. Companies founded by Case Western Reserve students, postdocs, and faculty are often run by former university postdocs and graduate students.
For more than a decade, BioInVision has been selling CryoViz technology as equipment and services to academic institutions, hospitals, biotech and pharmaceutical companies around the world, increasing international recognition for Ohio State.
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