The lab receives a CPRIT First-Time Tenure-Track Faculty Award
Published:
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has awarded the lab a Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members grant (RR260076) to build a cell-free synthetic biology platform for detecting, eliminating, and reprogramming the oncogenic bacteria implicated in colorectal cancer.
Certain bacteria in the tumor microbiome drive cancer progression and therapy resistance, but current tools cannot distinguish them from harmless commensals or remove them selectively. This award supports developing tools sensitive and specific enough to act on that distinction.
The work is a collaboration with Christopher Fan at Houston Methodist, who brings the microbe “machines” found in clinical samples, and Michael King at Rice BioE, who helps us track whether our tools hold up in a “wild” cancer environment.