Anna Sorace
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Biomedical Engineering
Many cancer treatments are judged by whether a tumor shrinks, but this can take months to see. A scan may also mislead when treatment causes swelling.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
molecular imaging
positron emission tomography
immunoPET
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Quantify HER2 levels and blood-vessel function in brain metastases from HER2+ breast cancer patients, using [89Zr]trastuzumab-PET and DCE-MRI, to measure how much trastuzumab reaches each lesion.
- Quantify HER2 differences within each brain lesion and between metastases in HER2+ patients with PET/MRI, to test whether this variability predicts response to radiation and targeted therapy.
- Determine whether oncolytic herpes virus therapy, alone or carrying IL-12 and/or IL-18, increases early T-cell infiltration and activation in mouse glioblastoma, tracked by CD8-PET and granzyme B PET.
- Test whether radiation or immune checkpoint inhibitors combined with oHSV boost T-cell infiltration and activation and improve long-term tumor response in mouse glioblastoma models.
- Determine whether extra oHSV doses, timed to windows when PET shows falling T-cell infiltration and activation, can rescue treatment response in mouse glioblastoma.
More about the research
Imaging that reveals what is happening inside a tumor could show earlier whether a drug reaches its target and whether the immune system is responding. Both projects use molecular imaging, mainly positron emission tomography (PET), which tracks radioactively labeled molecules in the body. The aim is to measure tumor biology without surgery and to guide treatment of cancers in the brain.
Why it matters
Patients with HER2+ breast cancer that has spread to the brain, and patients with glioblastoma, urgently need better treatment strategies. PET-based measures of drug delivery and immune activity could help doctors predict who will respond to therapy, personalize treatment, and time combination therapies or virus boosts. This may avoid months of waiting for tumor size to change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mekhail Anwar
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and test PET imaging of granzyme B, a molecule released by active killer T cells, and of tumor neutrophil levels to detect early response or resistance to PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors in mouse tumor models.
Srinivas Malladi
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how TEAD, a gene-switching transcription factor, drives AXL expression and brain metastasis in dormant, therapy-resistant HER2-positive breast cancer cells, using the lab's brain metastasis models.
Yvonne Yu-Hsuan Chen
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether bispecific IL-13Rα2/TGF-β CAR-T cells, which target a tumor marker and turn the suppressive signal TGF-β into a stimulant, clear glioblastoma and trigger immunity against tumor cells lacking the marker, in mouse models of mixed tumors.
The school
University of Alabama at Birmingham: 45 labs on PI Pages, $866M a year on research, 166 research doctorates a year.
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