Strategic collaboration funds interdisciplinary projects to improve cancer care

Funded proposals 

Rational design of metal nanoclusters for protection from radiation-induced skin injury

Novel approaches to investigate m6A RNA to study sensitivity and resistance to chemotherapy in acute myeloid leukemia and predict therapeutic response

Yuan Ma, an assistant professor of chemistry at Rice, and Shu-Hsia Chen, a professor of immunology at Houston Methodist Research Institute, are studying a chemical marker known as m6A which helps control leukemia cell growth, survival and resistance to treatment. They are interested in finding out if the amount of m6A present in cancer cells predicts how the cells will respond to cancer treatments. With this grant, they will develop an imaging method to measure the amount of m6A in leukemia cells. They will also try blocking m6A in leukemia cells to see if that will help certain treatments, like CAR-T cells, become more effective.

Source:

Rice University