Funding allows Johns Hopkins researchers to develop tools for more effective cancer procedures

BALTIMORE -- Researchers at Johns Hopkins University will be developing new tools to ensure cancer surgeries are safer and more effective.

The funding for this effort is coming from an initiative from the Biden Administration -- the Cancer Moonshot Initiative -- which aims to reduce the cancer death rate by at least half before 2047.

The initiative also aims to improve the experience of people touched by cancer.

Speeding up cancer diagnosis

Surgery is a common option for treatment when someone is first diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes, during that surgery, removing a tumor doesn't go as planned -- with some cancerous tissue left behind. Currently, it takes a while to know if that's the case.

"All of this information happens after you finish the surgery, so, if this bad news happens later, then it's too late," said Emad Boctor, an associate researcher professor at the Whiting School of Engineering.

Boctor, one of a team of researchers, not only from Johns Hopkins University, but other institutions nationwide, like the University of Texas Southwestern, are trying to make it so surgeons know that information faster.

Funding for research

The effort is thanks to $20,900,000 in Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health funding, or ARPA-H, a program that's part of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative.

With this funding, Boctor and other researchers will be developing a new kind of endoscope that will be able to distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous tissue.

When announcing this round of ARPA-H funding last Tuesday at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, President Biden said he was looking for this kind of research.

"A year ago, ARPA-H set its sights on a big idea, calling on researchers and innovators to pioneer new techniques and technologies to make cancer removal more precise, accurate and successful," he said.

Tulane University is another one of the ARPA-H recipients this round. In total, Mr. Biden announced up to $150 million in funding this round.

Tools being developed

Another piece of technology being developed by Boctor and his teams is a kind of fluorescent agent that will help the endoscope, even more, tell the difference between tissues.

"[Surgeons] will be able to go, cut the tumor, know exactly the extent of the cut they did, and have a high level of confidence there's no cancer left behind," Boctor said. "While they're doing that, they're not cutting important structure [like blood vessels]."

Aside from letting surgeons know some information faster, the aim is also to make things safer for patients.

"If you look across all cancer tumors -- breast, prostate, any type of cancer -- if the surgeon managed to do the surgery properly... typically these patients have more survival rate," Boctor said.

Boctor estimates it will take around three to five years to develop some kind of prototype of these technologies. 

Those prototypes will then head to human trials and be presented to the FDA for approval.