Medical Design Briefs - September 2022 - 35

" We develop little $2 widgets made
from a plastic by injection molding that
can take a liquid biopsy sample and
search for different types of markers that
can help a physician manage disease, "
says CBM2 director Steven Soper, Foundation
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry,
Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering,
who brought the center to
KU when he was recruited from the University
of North Carolina in 2016. " To
give you an example, this little chip is
used to isolate tumor cells out of the
blood of cancer patients. A physician will
take a sample of blood from the patient,
put it into the chip to enrich the tumor
cells from the blood sample - there's
very few of them, maybe about 10 or so
- and then we open those cells to look
at the genetic composition to help decide:
does the patient have a disease,
how to treat the disease, is the patient
responding to therapy? "
Of the 50 P41 centers, CBM2 is the only
one based in an NIH IDeA (Institutional
Development Awards) state - a designation
for states that historically have received
lower amounts of NIH funding.
" Most of these biotechnology resource
centers, as with all big projects, are on either
coast, " Soper says. " We're the only biotechnology
resource center that's funded
in an IDeA state, so that's a big hooray for
Kansas and KU - all major NIH centers
have high visibility, so we have a very important
mission because we're the only
center of these 50 that has these technologies,
and we're filling an important niche
within the NIH community. "
Much of the work of CBM2 takes place
in collaboration with partners that include
KU Medical Center (Andrew Godwin,
CBM2 co-director), University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill (Dr. David Kaufman,
CBM2 co-director), Louisiana State University
(professors Sunggook Park and Michael
C. Murphy) and the Wake Forest
School of Medicine (professor Adam Hall).
For instance, at KU Medical Center,
Godwin - who also serves as deputy director
of The University of Kansas Cancer
Center and director of Kansas Institute
for Precision Medicine COBRE
- and Soper are working to develop a
handheld instrument to spot viruses giving
rise to COVID-19 and to detect ovarian
cancer early in women with a high
family risk. This kind of cancer detection
uses a few blood drops placed on a plastic
chip created by the center to look for
Medical Design Briefs, September 2022
very small vesicles - the presence of
which indicates early stage of cancer that
will provide better survival compared to
current diagnostic methods.
" The CBM2 is an essential component
of our collaborative efforts to develop a
stand-alone Precision Medicine Institute
at the University of Kansas, " Godwin
says. " I'm pleased to serve as the codirector
for this P41 Center and have been
excited to work with an extremely talented
and creative team of bioengineers at
KU, LSU, UNC and Wake Forest who are
developing cutting-edge technologies to
help advance the future of health care. "
The medical advances developed at
CBM2 already are helping patients through
commercial partnerships with private firms
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35
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Medical Design Briefs - September 2022

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