Stanislav Y Emelianov
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Biomedical Engineering
Cell therapies place living cells inside the body to fight disease or repair damage. Doctors usually cannot see where those cells go, whether they survive, or what they do once they arrive.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
photoacoustic imaging
ultrasound imaging
focused ultrasound
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Confirm that CAR T cells tagged with gold nanorods reach breast tumors, using combined ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging in mice with HER2-expressing E0771 tumors.
- Use focused ultrasound heating, guided by ultrasound, photoacoustic and thermal imaging, to switch on heat-activated gene switches in HER2-CAR T cells. The switches make these cells produce the immune signal IL-15SA only inside the tumor.
- Measure how well heat-activated CAR T cell therapy works in mice, using imaging biomarkers of response and checking for reduced whole-body toxicity.
- Develop photo-magnetic nanoparticles and an apoptosis-reporting dye to label neural progenitor cells. The dye produces a photoacoustic signal when cells die. Test both agents for labeling efficiency and toxicity.
- Inject labeled live and dead neural progenitor cells into rat spinal cords and test whether US/PA/MRI imaging over time can tell living cells from dead ones.
- Build a clinical ultrasound/photoacoustic system that guides cell delivery in real time and checks the survival of transplanted cells.
More about the research
The research here builds imaging tools that combine ultrasound with light-generated sound to track and control therapeutic cells. One project uses cancer-fighting immune cells in breast tumors. The other uses transplanted nerve-supporting cells in the spinal cord.
Why it matters
Women with HER2-positive breast cancer, about 30% of breast cancer patients, could benefit from CAR T cell therapy if it can be switched on only inside tumors and limit whole-body toxicity. The method could extend to CAR T cells against other cancers. For people with spinal cord injury or ALS, tracking where transplanted stem-like cells go and whether they survive could explain why cell therapies fail in trials and help improve them.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Peter Chockley
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Develop monomeric chimeric antigen receptors (single-unit CARs with a stable off state) for natural killer cells, adding immune synapse augmentation, to reduce erratic signaling and improve killing of pediatric solid tumor cells.
David Akhavan
University of Kansas, KS·Biomedical Engineering
Develop nanocarriers, tiny drug-carrying particles, that can be loaded into CAR T cells, which are engineered tumor-targeting immune cells, to create a platform for delivering drugs into glioblastoma.
Michel Modo
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and optimize a gadolinium-gold nanoparticle contrast agent that labels newborn neural progenitor cells when injected into the lateral ventricle, making them visible on T1-weighted MRI.
The school
Georgia Institute of Technology: 50 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 572 research doctorates a year.
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