Kenneth B. Bader
University of Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Focused ultrasound can destroy tumors without a single cut. Concentrated sound waves create tiny bubbles inside tissue, and the bubbles break apart nearby cancer cells.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Physics
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
therapeutic ultrasound
focused ultrasound
histotripsy
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- Develop and characterize a tissue phantom, a tissue-like test material, containing an imprintable mechanophore that changes chemically under force, to record the brief stresses created by ultrasound microbubbles.
- Measure how far microbubble-induced stress spreads through soft materials, and link these stresses to cell death and other markers of bubble activity during focused ultrasound.
- Integrate an ultrafast, bubble-specific ultrasound imaging sequence onto a clinical-grade imager and evaluate its sensitivity and accuracy for detecting histotripsy bubbles in kidney tumor treatment.
- Develop methods to monitor and control the lifetime of the histotripsy bubble cloud, then use them to adjust pulse rate and improve destruction of renal cell carcinoma tissue.
- Use bubble cloud dissolution rate as real-time feedback on treatment outcome in a pig kidney ablation model, and measure urinary complications in short-term survival studies.
More about the research
This can match the goals of surgery with shorter recovery and lower cost. But key questions remain open: how much bubble activity is needed for treatment to work, how bubbles stress and damage soft tissue, and how doctors can see the bubbles during treatment. The two projects address these questions, one through basic mechanics and regulatory tools, the other through imaging that guides the treatment of kidney cancer.
Why it matters
Many patients with kidney cancer cannot have surgery because of age or other illnesses. Better bubble imaging could let more of them receive noninvasive histotripsy and help doctors confirm that tumors are destroyed safely. A mechanophore-based tissue phantom could also give the FDA a tool for setting guidelines and testing new bubble-based ultrasound devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Eli Vlaisavljevich
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Biomedical Engineering
Design a flat, high-frequency histotripsy array transducer with built-in high-resolution ultrasound imaging, and tune its pulse settings to destroy thyroid tissue while sparing nearby nerves and vessels.
Timothy Bigelow
Iowa State University, IA·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether adding lower-amplitude pulses to histotripsy, an ultrasound technique that creates bubble clouds to mechanically destroy cells, reduces cavitation memory and shortens treatment of infected hernia mesh, and measure how exposures affect mesh properties.
Timothy Ziemlewicz
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Biomedical Engineering
Compare strategies for limiting breathing-related liver motion during histotripsy, testing high-frequency jet ventilation against cone-beam CT-based motion modeling that adjusts the treatment prescription.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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