Six months since Bidens’ visit to his laboratory, J. Quincy Brown “couldn’t be prouder” of his team’s progress.
“I feel like things happened a long time ago, and it was just last week. But it’s just because so much is happening in such a short amount of time,” Brown said.
Brown, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Tulane University, is spearheading the creation of a novel imaging system that can detect cancer cells that remain after surgery while patients are still under anesthesia.
The device, known as MAGIC-SCAN, received $23 million in funding from former President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot program. The initiative aims to cut cancer rates in half by 2047 by supporting high-potential, high-impact endeavors within cancer research.
The deadline for MAGIC-SCAN’s deliverables is much sooner.
According to their contract with the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, the team must turn in a working prototype within two years and translate the device into a clinical setting by 2029.
Brown meets with agency representatives monthly to confirm that the team is on track to meet these fast-approaching deadlines.
And so far, they have, despite several road bumps.
The device’s laser malfunctioned the day of the Biden’s visit due to the room’s cold temperature. More recently, the team has been working to stabilize the scanner to prevent blurry images.
There have been ongoing technical breakthroughs, too, though Brown cannot yet publicly share them. Nonetheless, the challenge remains formidable at all levels. In his words, detecting cancer cells within a mass of tissue is something like “trying to find a soccer ball in a map of the state of Louisiana.”
The project has several interdisciplinary groups working on each of its aspects.
Engineers of MAGIC-SCAN’s imaging system are working to meet both technical needs and the needs of human users. Brown described it as “kind of like a document scanner…but instead of scanning a document, it scans a piece of tissue.”
Ideally, surgeons will be able to scan tissue from the site of excision at half-micron resolution and determine whether their operation was successful within 10 minutes, reducing the need for follow-up operations, radiation therapy or chemotherapy.
A group led by Brian Summa, associate professor of computer science, is focused on the project’s cyber-infrastructure. Every run of the scanner produces about four terabytes of data and requires significant computational energy spent on image processing. For comparison, just one terabyte of data is equivalent to 1,300 paper filing cabinets.
The principal goal of Summa’s group, which includes members from the University of Utah, is to build machine learning and artificial intelligence models that assist doctors in recognizing remaining cancerous tissue in the images generated by the scanner.
Every aspect of the MAGIC-SCAN project requires collaboration — biomedical engineers, software engineers, computer scientists, chemists, lawyers and physicians all contribute unique areas of expertise to the device’s development. According to Brown, the hiring spree that followed the Bidens’ visit in August has been among their biggest advancements.
“We’ve hired three engineers, a software developer, an administrator, some research specialists,” Brown said. “The Biden visit really helped a lot in terms of visibility and showing people that there’s this cool project that could be worked on in New Orleans.”
Dylan Lucia, a bio-innovation Ph.D. student, joined the MAGIC-SCAN team in August.
“It’s so in-depth, such a massive thing with so many moving parts. There are so many puzzles that we have already solved, already in just six months. But also, there’s more and more that pops up that we get to try to solve,” he said.
Lucia, a Tulane graduate, is now responsible for guiding a group of undergraduate students recently added to the team. The project has brought several people back home to Louisiana, including a graduate of Jesuit High School and a University of New Orleans alumnus.
Brown, himself a native Louisianian, hopes that the project continues to draw both people and attention to the region.
“Companies … could look in New Orleans as a place where these types of innovations can happen,” Brown said. “So hopefully it’s beneficial to not only Tulane, but New Orleans in general, and the Gulf South.”
The contract with ARPA-H also stipulates that the device should be deployed in four hospitals within five years. Considering the disproportionately high rates of cancer in the area between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, sometimes referred to as “Cancer Alley,” the MAGIC-SCAN team intends to introduce the scanner to local hospitals first.
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