Stephen Lai
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Radiation and chemotherapy cure many people with head and neck cancer, but they can also leave lasting damage, and some tumors stop responding to treatment. Many patients are now younger survivors of cancers linked to human papillomavirus (HPV), so they live for decades with these after-effects.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Pharmacology
- Topics
head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
oropharyngeal cancer
osteoradionecrosis
- Grants
- 5 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Track when osteoradionecrosis develops, how symptoms change, and how DCE-MRI Ktrans values change in HPV-related throat cancer survivors. Use this data to validate risk models based on radiation dose and clinical factors.
- Compare pentoxifylline and cilostazol, drugs that improve blood flow, for how well they restore blood supply to damaged jawbone. Patients with advanced osteoradionecrosis will take one of the drugs before planned jaw surgery.
- Qualify DCE-MRI Ktrans/Ve, MRI measures of blood flow through tissue, as an FDA-defined biomarker of jaw injury risk after radiation. Standardize how images are taken and release open-source analysis software.
- Confirm which genes microRNA-27a*, a small RNA that switches off cancer genes, controls directly in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Find drug combinations that boost its tumor-killing effect in cell culture and mouse models.
- Test whether ultrasound-triggered microbubbles can deliver miR-27a* specifically to head and neck tumors in mice. Measure whether this delivery improves standard multimodality treatment.
- Measure how cisplatin changes the conversion of pyruvate to lactate (kPL) across head and neck cancer subtypes using hyperpolarized MRI. Build a model from these data that predicts each tumor's response to treatment.
- Run a first-in-human hyperpolarized MRI study before and after cisplatin chemotherapy. Compare imaging changes with metabolic profiling of tumors and with genomic and transcriptomic analysis of circulating tumor cells to identify markers of resistance.
More about the research
The work spans two linked problems. The first is how to spot and limit radiation injury to the jaw and mouth before it becomes severe. The second is how to tell early whether a tumor is responding to the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, and how to treat tumors in new ways.
Why it matters
Head and neck cancer survivors could benefit from a validated MRI test that flags jawbone injury before it turns into osteoradionecrosis. Such a test would let doctors monitor and treat the injury earlier, and could ease later problems like dry mouth and swallowing difficulty. Patients receiving cisplatin may one day have their treatment adjusted based on metabolic scans that show early whether the drug is working. miR-27a* delivered by ultrasound could become a new treatment option to add to current therapy for this cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Steven Frank
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Characterize late radiation-associated dysphagia (L-RAD) and identify its subtypes by extending follow-up of a 440-patient randomized trial of proton therapy (IMPT) versus X-ray therapy (IMRT) to 10 years.
Hua Li
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a learning-based prognostic model that predicts cervical cancer treatment response and outcome by integrating RNA biomarkers, radiologic and histologic images, and clinicopathologic data from about 600 patients at two institutions.
Dohun Pyeon
Michigan State University, MI·Microbiology & Immunology
Define how the chemokine CXCL14 increases MHC-I antigen presentation, which lets immune cells recognize tumor cells, to suppress HPV-positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
The school
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: 23 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research.
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