$18M ARPA-H Award Supports Rice-Led Research on Tumor Analysis System for Breast, Head, and Neck Cancer

by Carrie Noxon
Special to Rice News

A Rice University-led multi-institutional research collaboration has won an award of up to $18 million over five years from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop and validate a new system for improving tumor removal accuracy for two types of cancer: breast, and head and neck cancer.

Called AccessPath, the novel, affordable, slide-free cancer pathology system will help surgeons know whether they have completely removed tumors during surgery by enabling rapid, automatic tumor margin classification of resected tumors. AccessPath is one of several projects funded through the ARPA-H Precision Surgical Interventions program announced today as part of a broader $150 million Biden-Harris administration Cancer Moonshot initiative.

“Because of its low cost, high speed, and automated analysis, we believe AccessPath can revolutionize real-time surgical guidance, greatly expanding the range of hospitals able to provide accurate intraoperative tumor margin assessment and improving outcomes for all cancer surgery patients,” said Rebecca Richards-Kortum, a Rice bioengineering professor and director of the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies who is the lead PI on the project. Ashok Veeraraghavan, chair of Rice’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science, is a co-PI on the project.

Every year, nearly 2 million Americans are newly diagnosed with cancer. For solid tumors, surgical removal is often the first option. Yet, during surgery, it can be difficult to tell where a tumor ends and healthy tissue begins ⎯ an area referred to as the margin ⎯ due to a lack of contrast. Due to the difficulty of identifying the margin, multiple surgeries are often required to successfully remove an entire tumor.

“Precise margin assessment is key to the oncologic success of any cancer operation,” said Dr. Ana Paula Refinetti, an associate professor in the Department of Breast Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and one of the lead surgeons PIs on the project. “The development of a new low-cost technology that enables immediate margin assessment could transform the landscape of surgical oncology ⎯ particularly in low-resource settings, reducing the number of repeat interventions, lowering cancer care costs and improving patient outcomes.”

AccessPath researchers are working to solve key technical challenges in tumor removal, making care for surgical pathology patients timelier and more convenient, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

Ensuring complete tumor removal involves determining whether there is any residual cancerous tissue left at the edge of the resected area. Because it requires specialized equipment and expert personnel, the use of surgical pathology to ensure negative tumor margins is especially limited in low-resource settings in the United States and other countries.

The AccessPath system is intended to be an affordable end-to-end system for immediate digital pathology of resected tumors, with the potential to greatly expand the range of hospitals able to provide accurate intra-operative tumor margin assessment and improve outcomes for all cancer patients treated with surgery.

The AccessPath system includes three key technological advancements:

• A novel, rugged, high-resolution microscope design with a large field-of-view and extended depth of field that can image tumors rapidly
• The optimization of inexpensive, fast-acting, effective fluorescent stains for dying tumor margins
• Establishing fast and accurate artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to read the imagery to classify margins as positive or negative.

By solving these technical challenges, AccessPath aims to significantly cut the cost of pathology equipment and streamline analysis for negative tumor margin classification in order to deliver immediate pathology assessments.

“These efforts build on Rice’s long-standing relationship with MD Anderson to prevent, detect and treat cancer and ultimately save lives. Rice is focused on leading innovations in health and medicine to address disparities, and I commend our researchers for their leadership on this critical project,” said Amy Dittmar, Rice’s Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

“AccessPath is exactly the kind of life-changing research and health care innovation we are proud to produce at Rice, where we’re committed to addressing and solving the world’s most pressing medical issues,” said Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Rice’s executive vice president for research. “Partnering with MD Anderson on this vital work underscores the importance of such ongoing collaborations with our neighbors in the world’s largest medical center. I am thrilled for Rebecca and her team; it’s teamwork that makes discoveries like these possible.”

Tomasz Tkaczyk, a professor of bioengineering and electrical and computer engineering at Rice, is also a collaborator on the project.

In addition to Rice and MD Anderson, other awardees include the University of Texas Health School of Dentistry, Duke University, Carnegie Mellon University and 3rd Stone Design.