Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Hongshen Ma and the School of Biomedical Engineering’s Professor Megan Levings have received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grant to support their research collaboration on chimeric antigen receptor cell therapies used to treat cancer.
The purpose of the CIHR Project Grant Program is to “contribute to the creation and use of health-related knowledge.” Aiming to foster projects with the greatest potential for impact, the Project Grants fund work conducted by individual or groups of researchers on the grounds of the chosen projects’ “significance, impact and feasibility.”
Chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy modifies a cancer patient’s own immune cells to provide them with the ability to fight cancer cells. Dr. Ma and Dr. Levings aim to analyze these engineered cells at the single cell level to improve the design and manufacture of this type of cancer therapy. The CIHR Project Grant will provide $864,450 over five years to support this work.
Dr. Ma and Dr. Levings research is one of several projects from Applied Science to receive CIHR funding from their 2022 spring competition. Read more at: https://apsc.ubc.ca/news/2022/cihr-project-grants-awarded-to-ubc-applied-science-research-cancer-therapy-and-heart.