Spotting Signs of Cancer When There’s Still Time
Hao named a Beckman Young Investigator
By Patrick L. Kennedy
By the time many cancers are diagnosed, it’s too late for treatment to have much effect. Patients with advanced stage cancers largely have significantly lower survival rates.
Why the struggle to detect cancer earlier? “A big reason is that current diagnosis relies on static features like DNA mutations and protein abundance,” says Assistant Professor Liangliang Hao (BME) of the Boston University College of Engineering. “These are important, but they often miss the earliest, most meaningful biochemical changes, which are driven by protein activity. Proteins are expressed throughout the body, but what matters most is where and when they’re active. Overlooking this means we likely miss the proteins that are actively contributing to disease, especially at its earliest stages.”
A better way
What if clinicians had the technology to detect this activity? What if they could regularly scan high-risk populations, tracking the earliest disease signatures in real time and space? That sort of early warning system could save lives. “If we could spot disease sooner, diagnose it with greater precision, we’d open the door to more effective, personalized therapies,” Hao says.
In fact, Hao is trying to build just such a technology, and a grant from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation might help her get there. Out of 300 applicants, Hao and nine other early-career researchers across the country have been selected to receive the 2025 Beckman Young Investigator Awards. Over the next four years, Hao and her lab will receive $600,000 to develop a first-of-its-kind protein activity imaging platform that might transform how we diagnose and treat cancer and other complex diseases, helping to realize the vision of precision medicine.
Visualizing the hot spots
Encoded by our DNA, proteins are the “molecular machines,” Hao says, that carry out our bodies’ essential functions. Diseases like cancer arise when these proteins stop functioning properly.
Hao’s proposed platform combines two technologies: specially designed molecular probes that will light up only when a protein is actively functioning; and a multimodal imaging system that will capture these chemical signals at high spatial resolution, creating visualizations of whole organs in living organisms.
“This powerful, integrative platform enables deep 3D tissue imaging to find where cancer-causing proteins are active in the body,” Hao explains. “I am most excited about the potential to spot the most dangerous cancer cells, at their very earliest stage and deep inside the body, without needing to carry out an invasive procedure such as a tissue biopsy. By providing a comprehensive view of disease origin, we can diagnose and treat cancer at the point when it is most treatable, saving precious healthcare resources and, more importantly, human lives.”
Converging to solve a need
Hao has been designing molecular probes since her postdoctoral work at MIT—where she began focusing on early cancer detection because she lost a grandfather and an uncle to late-stage cancers. “I realized to develop those diagnostics, you really have to understand the disease better,” she says. She is working with colleagues across BU and externally to develop the full imaging system.
“It’s a nice collaboration,” says Hao. “It’s a combination of researchers with different areas of expertise and students from diverse backgrounds—we have chemists and biologists as well as biomedical engineers in my lab.”
Dream big
Named for scientific instrument pioneer Arnold O. Beckman, the Beckman Foundation supports U.S. institutions and young scientists whose creative, high-risk, and interdisciplinary research will lead to innovations and new tools and methods for scientific discovery.
“What’s unique about this award is that it allows us to take risks and ask bold questions,” says Hao. “That’s especially important for early-career researchers like me. It’s a huge encouragement for me to dream big.”
“Our newest cohort of young researchers are involved in high risk, high reward work that will address wide-ranging challenges,” says Beckman Foundation Executive Director Anne Hultgren. “We are thrilled to welcome each of these excellent scientists into the Beckman family, to facilitate the launch of these extremely innovative projects, and to witness them achieve their full potential.”