Muneesh Tewari, MD, PhD, Technology Impact Award Recipient Regents of the University of Michigan Area of Research: Leukemia, Lymphoma A key challenge in both cancer immunotherapy research and clinical care is the lack of technology that enables us to extract quality information from very small amounts of blood in an cost-effective way. In particular, being able to measure the activity of important hormones known as cytokines in this simple way could improve care for patients, for example, through tests that could help catch immune-related toxicities early when they are most treatable. It could also accelerate lab research involving animals with limited blood samples available. To address this challenge, Dr. Tewari has assembled a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, with clinical, biological, and engineering expertise. The goal is to engineer a system that can detect and quantify multiple cytokines in under an hour from 10 microliters—less than a drop—of blood. Moving forward, they plan to validate the technology by detecting cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a CAR T cell-associated side effect. Early detection of cytokines released into the blood could lead to early intervention in patients and help make this lifesaving new therapy safer. Projects and Grants Single Molecule Counting Digital Immunoassay Platform for Ultrafast Multiplex Screening of Cytokine Release Syndrome in CAR-T Patients University of Michigan | Leukemia, Lymphoma | 2020
