Rice and Baylor seek to leverage their complementary multidisciplinary strengths to advance important fields such as cancer research and therapeutics, health equity, digital health, and surgery.
SynthX Center and Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center
In 2022, Rice's SynthX Center joined forces with Baylor College of Medicine’s Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. This collaboration aims to explore health problems and develop new treatments through initiatives such as seed grant opportunities, workshops, collaborative meetings, retreats, and symposia.
Pioneering Interdisciplinary Research
To foster innovative partnerships between synthetic chemists and clinical scientists in cancer research, SynthX Center and the Duncan Cancer Center announced a call for seed grants, awarding three proposals.
One of the awarded projects proposed the utilization of photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging for intraoperative breast lesion localization and surgical guidance, designed to enhance precise tumor localization during breast surgery, especially for nonpalpable lesions. This system, developed by the Li lab at SynthX Center and the Pabel lab at Duncan Cancer Center, is now being utilized by BCM faculty in operating rooms to examine surgically excised breast tumor tissues.
This innovation helps address the challenge of lacking direct tumor visualization, that can lead to surgical imprecision, such as inadequate excision, excessive tissue removal, prolonged operating times, and the potential need for additional surgeries.
Securing Extramural Funding
The Rice-Baylor collaboration has expedited the integration of advances in medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, and machine learning into clinical practices.
In December 2024, researchers at Rice and Baylor were awarded with a $2.3 million grant from the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs to develop a novel antibody therapy for treating bone metastases in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer. The goal is to improve treatment for bone metastases, which affect up to 40% of ER+ breast cancer survivors.
Engineering Solutions in Surgery
Through seed grant opportunities, and research & networking events, this initiative aims to foster innovation and strengthen the collaborative efforts between Rice University and the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor.
Seed grants
By focusing on advancing surgical research and education, the seed grants are intended to develop self-sustaining, nationally competitive research programs that address critically important surgical challenges.
For information about awarded projects, please visit the ENRICH website
Health Equity and Digital Health
This seed grant fosters interdisciplinary collaborations between both institutions, enabling them to leverage their combined knowledge to enhance innovations in health equity and digital health. Ultimately, this initiative aims to create impactful solutions for improving patient care.
One project was selected in 2024 to received a total of $50,000 in matching funds from the partnering institutions. More information.
"Evaluating Equity and Community-Level Vulnerabilities in the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence-based Symptom Checkers for Self-diagnosis."
- David Abraham, lecturer in biosciences, Rice University.
- Evan Siemann, the Harry C. and Olga K. Professor of BioSciences, Wiess School of Natural Sciences, Rice University.
- Dr. LeChauncy Woodard, associate professor, Medicine-Health Services Research, Baylor College of Medicine.