Researcher de Gracia Lux receives grant to study ultrasound gene delivery in blood cancers
Dr. Caroline de Gracia Lux has received a $633,000 grant from the Department of Defense to investigate "Eliminating Ex Vivo Manipulation and Viral Transfection of T Cells in CAR T-Cell Immunotherapy of B-Cell Malignancies Using Ultrasound-Based Gene Delivery."
Currently, immunotherapy is effective in treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia and lymphoma, but it requires removing and then genetically modifying a patient’s cells so that they can be re-injected to recognize and destroy the cancer. Dr. de Gracia Lux is investigating engineering these cells in the body using ultrasound on microbubbles that circulate in the blood.
“It is a simple but powerful approach,” Dr. de Gracia Lux said. “It’s minimally invasive with minimal discomfort and could be repeated as many times as needed, without risks or complications.”
Dr. de Gracia Lux received her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Strasbourg, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Diego, where she also completed a Micro-MBA program. She joined the Radiology Research faculty as an Instructor in 2015 and was recently promoted to Assistant Professor.
At UT Southwestern, she combines creative synthetic chemistry and formulation to develop ultrasound contrast agents in the Translational Research in Ultrasound Theranostics (TRUST) lab, under the direction of Dr. Robert Mattrey.