Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are advancing cancer prevention and treatment through lifestyle science, molecular targeting and biomedical engineering.
Prevention after remission
Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D.Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D., professor of nutrition sciences in the School of Health Professions and the associate director of Cancer Prevention and Control at the O’Neal Cancer Center, has worked with her team to create a digital lifestyle management platform for cancer survivors.
According to Demark-Wahnefried, prevention does not stop at remission.
“Cancer survivors are a vulnerable population,” Demark-Wahnefried said. “Once people have been diagnosed and treated, they’re at risk for a second cancer and a host of other problems such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and osteoporosis.”
Some 71 percent of cancer survivors are overweight. With 13 cancers linked to obesity, excess weight can significantly raise the risk of recurrence or developing a second cancer, in some cases by 10 percent to 580 percent.
To address that risk, Demark-Wahnefried and her team developed AMPLIFY or AiM, Plan and act on LIFestYles, a comprehensive web-based lifestyle intervention for survivors.
The program delivers weekly interactive sessions focusing on nutrition, physical activity and weight management. It includes tailored meal plans, grocery lists, food preparation videos and strength training guidance. The program is personalized and able to meet users where they are.
Demark-Wahnefried emphasized that survivors are not powerless in their care.
“People can do so much to be partners in their care,” she said. “What you provide your body in the way of food can make it more hostile for a cancer cell to grow, or really permissive for a cancer cell to grow.”
Turning resistance into vulnerability
Benjamin Larimer, Ph.D.Benjamin Larimer, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology at the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine and an associate scientist at the O’Neal Cancer Center, is developing a therapy designed to counter tumor resistance.
Traditional targeted therapies eliminate certain cancer cells but allow others to survive and regrow. Larimer’s approach focuses on calreticulin, a protein that moves to the cell surface when cancer cells die, signaling the immune system.
His team engineered nanobodies that bind to surface calreticulin and deliver therapeutic payloads. As treatment kills tumor cells, more calreticulin is exposed, which creates a cycle that increases the percentage of targetable cells.
“Instead of selecting resistant cells, you’re making the whole tumor more vulnerable,” Larimer said. “What excites me is that this is a fundamentally different way of thinking about targeted therapy. We’re designing a system that adapts to the tumor as treatment proceeds and gets better over time.”
Engineering precision in tumor ablation
S. Abdollah Mirbozorgi, Ph.D.S. Abdollah Mirbozorgi, Ph.D., associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the School of Engineering, focuses on improving how tumors are physically destroyed.
Thermal ablation destroys tumors by heating them. But heat spreads symmetrically, while tumors are often irregularly shaped. This can damage surrounding healthy tissue, or lead to incomplete destruction of the tumor.
“When you generate heat, you don’t have control of that penetration,” Mirbozorgi said.
His approach uses alternating cycles of heating and cooling to limit how far thermal energy spreads. By rapidly reversing electrical current, the system can pull energy back before it extends beyond the tumor boundary. The speed of those alternating cycles determines how far the treatment reaches.
In addition, ultrasound beam-forming technology allows the teams to steer thermal energy toward specific regions of the tumor. An ultra-wideband sensing antenna provides real-time feedback by detecting changes in tissue properties during treatment.
Together, these components create a closed-loop precision ablation system designed to better protect healthy tissue, a critical need in areas like the brain, where even small amounts of collateral damage can affect speech, vision or mobility.
“We hope this device can increase precision and increase survival,” Mirbozorgi said.