Yujing Song is a ME PhD student working with ME Professor, Katsuo Kurabayshi on a multidisciplinary project of engineering and medicine research. Song is one of nine awardees presented with a grant from the Precision Health Scholars Award. These grants have a range of up to $80,000 each to support their innovative projects of early-career researchers.
Song’s research is titled, “Pre-equilibrium Single Molecule Counting Digital Immunoassay Platform for Ultrafast Multiplex Screening of Cytokine Release Syndrome in Patients Receiving Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell Therapy.” His grant will directly support applying single-molecule counting to screening for cytokine release syndrome, an inflammatory syndrome resulting from some cancer immunotherapies.
Kurabayshi explains, “This highly multidisciplinary engineering/medicine research applies a novel single-molecule protein counting platform to enable massively parallel rapid measurements of a large number of circulating blood biomarkers in critically ill patients. The obtained data will provide critical information for precisely predicting the early onset and trajectory of the time-sensitive severe immune disorder that often follows emerging cancer immunotherapy involving chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell infusion. The technology will be ready for future clinical trials aiming to develop precision medicine strategies for intervening life-threatening illnesses.”
For a full list for award winners click here.
