Both leaders highlighted centered ultrasound and synthetic intelligence (AI) as areas the place their establishments already intersect.
Virginia Tech has a historical past in centered ultrasound analysis and innovation — a noninvasive expertise that makes use of focused sound waves to ship vitality deep throughout the physique, together with into the mind. Researchers in Roanoke are exploring each high-intensity strategies that destroy tumors and low-intensity methods that may modulate mind exercise or briefly open the blood-brain barrier to permit therapeutic anti-cancer medication to achieve tumors.
Children’s National is utilizing comparable expertise to deal with pediatric mind cancers and open the blood-brain barrier, and each organizations are Focused Ultrasound Centers of Excellence. A collectively appointed physician-scientist, Fred Wu, is an assistant professor with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and on the Children’s National Brain Tumor Institute who works throughout each websites, linking scientific affected person functions in Washington, D.C., with biomedical analysis.
Artificial intelligence is one other bridge between the establishments. At Virginia Tech’s Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics in Alexandria and Blacksburg, pc scientists and engineers are growing AI instruments which might be being utilized to medication, together with pediatric analysis and hospital operations.
Personalized, cell-based therapies
At Children’s National, AI is already bettering entry to care in low-resource settings. In Malawi, clinicians are utilizing handheld ultrasound paired with AI algorithms to diagnose rheumatic coronary heart illness, and low-field MRI enhanced with machine studying to detect cerebral malaria — approaches that might inform comparable efforts in rural U.S. communities.
“These are examples of how we can take what we’re learning through basic and translational research at our innovative institutes, and apply it directly to patient care,” Kuppermann stated.
In addition, Kuppermann and Friedlander underscored mobile and genetic therapies as a transformative frontier in trendy medication. These therapies use a affected person’s personal cells which have been re-engineered to acknowledge and assault their tumors or apply gene enhancing applied sciences to restore disease-causing genetic sequences to right or fight illness at its supply.
Recently, on the third annual Cell and Gene Therapy Symposium in Washington, D.C., Catherine Bollard, senior vice chairman and chief analysis officer at Children’s National and director of its Center for Cancer and Immunology Research, and Patrick Hanley, chief and director of the Cellular Therapy Program, led discussions on advancing these therapies and bettering the manufacturing of customized, cell-based therapies for youngsters. The symposium was supported by CHARM – the Capital Health and Mid-Atlantic Regenerative Medicine initiative.
“It is exciting to have the opportunity to collaborate with our Children’s National colleagues who are established leading innovators in this space on advancing these technologies,” Friedlander stated.
Such therapies are already reshaping look after sure cancers and genetic issues like sickle cell illness. Researchers at Children’s National have pioneered these strategies for youngsters, and Friedlander stated increasing these capabilities by means of partnerships might assist make them accessible to extra sufferers over a broader area.
“These are transformative advances in medicine,” Kuppermann stated. “Our colleagues at Children’s National are already delivering them to patients, and together we can help ensure more children have access to the same life-changing opportunities.”
