Researcher Lux receives grant to study nanotechnology in treating leukemia

Dr. Jacques Lux
Dr. Jacques Lux

Dr. Jacques Lux has received an award from the Children’s Cancer Fund (CCF) Comprehensive Center for Pediatric Oncology Research to support his investigation of improving efficacy and safety of amino acid depletion therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia using translatable nanotechnology. The grant, totaling $297,235, will fund Dr. Lux’s research over a period of three years.

In announcing the award, CCF Executive Director Jennifer Arthur said the organization remained dedicated to the effort to eliminate pediatric cancers, and that its partnership with UT Southwestern’s researchers would help to achieve that goal.

Dr. Lux received his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Strasbourg, and completed postdoctoral training at the faculty of pharmacy in Strasbourg, where he developed activatable optical probes for the detection of viral RNA. He then received training in supramolecular chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and additional postdoctoral research at the University of California - San Diego. He joined the Radiology Research faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2015.

At UT Southwestern, he develops novel nanomedicine platforms to diagnose and treat disease in vivo noninvasively with the long-term objective of developing theranostic agents that can be used in the clinical setting. He serves as the assistant director of the Translational Research in Ultrasound Theranostics (TRUST) lab, under the direction of Dr. Robert Mattrey.