CPRIT awards UT Health San Antonio $3.4 million to target drug-resistant cancers, raise HPV vaccination rates
Grant and Award Announcement
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Jun-2025 19:10 ET (20-Jun-2025 23:10 GMT/UTC)
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) was awarded nearly $3.4 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), to target hard-to-treat cancers with technologies not currently available in the state and boosting vaccination rates for the human papillomavirus (HPV) that leads to cancer.
Researchers have found a promising new method for gene therapy. They successfully restarted inactive genes by bringing them closer to genetic switches on the DNA called enhancers. The intermediate piece of DNA was cut out using CRISPR-Cas9 technology. This strategy opens up new possibilities for treating genetic diseases. The team specifically shows the technology’s potential for the treatment of sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia, two genetic blood diseases. In these conditions, a faulty gene could potentially be compensated by reactivating a helpful but normally inactive one. This ‘delete-to-recruit’ method works by simply changing the spacing—without adding new genes or foreign elements. The discovery, made by researchers from the Hubrecht Institute (De Laat group), Erasmus MC and Sanquin, was published in the journal Blood.
QUT robotics researchers have developed a new robot navigation system that mimics neural processes of the human brain and uses less than 10 per cent of the energy required by traditional systems.
Excitons--bound pairs of electrons and holes created by light--are key to the optoelectronic behavior of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). However, because excitons are confined to extremely small regions and exist for only fleeting moments, it has been extremely challenging to directly observe their behavior using conventional measurement techniques.
In this study, we overcame that challenge by using an ultrafast infrared near-field optical microscope that focuses femtosecond infrared laser pulses down to the nanoscale. This advanced approach allowed us to visualize where excitons are generated and decay inside CNTs in real space and real time.
Our observations revealed that nanoscale variations in the local environment--such as subtle lattice distortions within individual CNTs or interactions with neighboring CNTs--can significantly affect exciton generation and relaxation dynamics.
These insights into local exciton dynamics pave the way for precise control of light-matter interactions at the nanoscale, offering new opportunities for the development of advanced optoelectronic devices and quantum technologies based on carbon nanotube platforms.
Researchers generated a strong immune response to HIV with just one vaccine dose, by adding two powerful adjuvants to the vaccine. This strategy could lead to vaccines that only need to be given once, for infectious diseases including HIV or SARS-CoV-2.