ANN ARBOR, MI — Zhen Xu, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s department of biomedical engineering, has been awarded the 2019 Andrew J. Lockhart Memorial Prize from the Focused Ultrasound Foundation.

The $75,000 prize is awarded annually to recognize outstanding contributions in advancing cancer treatment using focused ultrasound and enhancing the potential for continued achievements in the field, according to a news release from the foundation.

“This prize is an amazing recognition of the hard work and dedication my team and I have had for cancer research,” Xu said.

Xu said her primary research is focused on developing non-invasive ultrasound therapy for treating cancer and neurological diseases, and her team has been working for the past 20 years on creating and developing histotripsy, a non-invasive ultrasound technique. Ultrasound is applied outside the body and targets tissue inside the body, and histotripsy can be used to mechanically destroy and liquefy the tissue into debris.

The work led to an initial human trial to treat liver cancer patients last year. The results showed a local tumor reduction as well as global tumor control due to the immune response induced by histotripsy, Xu said.

Conscious of the coronavirus pandemic, Xu said she plans to donate some of the funds to purchase supplies for local hospitals. She’s also planning to donate some of the money to the Charles Cain fellowship, which supports a Ph.D. student working on cancer research at UM. Xu said Cain died last week after a battle with cancer.

The Lockhart Memorial Prize was established in 2017 by family and friends of Andrew Lockhart, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 39 after a battle with cancer, according to the Focused Ultrasound Foundation.

“Motivated by this award, we will keep pushing and are hopeful within the next three to five years, we will be able to bring this new non-invasive technology to wide clinical use to save the lives of patients with liver cancer and other cancer types,” Xu said.

The release said a call for nominations for the 2020 prize will be announced later this spring.

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