A Johns Hopkins Engineering-led team has won an award of up to $20.9 million over five years from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop novel technologies for precise tumor removal. ARPA-H is a federal funding agency established by the Biden-Harris administration to rapidly advance high-impact biomedical research centered around preventing, detecting, and treating cancer and other diseases.

Using its award, the team—led by Malone Center affiliate Emad Boctor and including collaborators from Johns Hopkins’ schools of Engineering and Medicine, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, and industry—will develop a novel, non-contact photoacoustic endoscope that promises to provide an information-enhanced view of the surgical field without altering surgeons’ workflows. When used with the team’s proposed multi-cancer fluorescent contrast agent, this endoscope will help surgeons identify and remove any remaining microscopic cancer remnants during tumor removal procedures.

The team will also use existing fluorescent dyes in combination with their novel photoacoustic endoscope to visualize critical anatomical structures, allowing surgeons to “see” deep into human tissue to reveal hidden blood vessels and nerves so that they are not accidentally damaged during such procedures.

This project is one of several nationwide chosen for funding of up to $150 million total from the ARPA-H Precision Surgical Interventions (PSI) program, which is part of the broader Biden-Harris administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative.

“This project exemplifies our school’s commitment to leading visionary, life-changing innovations that directly improve human health and well-being. This ARPA-H award is a testament not only to the potential of this project and the expertise of our faculty but also to our track record of driving significant health and biomedical advancements that positively impact human lives,” says Ed Schlesinger, Benjamin T. Rome Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering.

Surgical procedures are often the first treatment option for the nearly two million Americans newly diagnosed with cancer each year; the PSI program aims to make these surgeries more effective, reducing the need for repeat surgeries and decreasing the damage to healthy tissue to ultimately save and extend cancer patients’ lives.

Headshot of Emad Boctor.

Emad Boctor

“It’s not about one surgery versus two—it’s a matter of survival rate, human life,” says Boctor, the technical director of the project and the director of the Medical UltraSound Imaging and Intervention Collaboration Research Laboratory in the Whiting School. “Enabling a successful first surgery and ending it with a negative margin—when there are no cancer cells left behind—means that you are not only giving more years to the patient but sustaining their quality of life, as well.”

The team is currently developing a prototype and contrast agent. The researchers anticipate that their non-contact endoscopic system will be ready for human trials within five years.

Other Hopkins researchers involved in this effort include Malone chairs Mathias Unberath and Russell H. Taylor; Jin U. Kang and Peter Kazanzides from the Whiting School of Engineering; and Jeeun Kang, Raymond C. Koehler, Jacky Jennings, Lisa Jacobs, and Ashley Cimino-Mathews from the School of Medicine. The team also includes Martin Pomper from UT Southwestern; Brad Wood and Peter Pinto from the NIH; and industry partners Kitware, Inc. and Intuitive Surgical.