Lukasz Bugaj, PhD

Overview

Aim: Treatment and Therapy

Over the last decade, immunotherapies that activate the body’s immune system to fight cancer, have been transformational for melanoma and kidney cancers but have elicited minimal responses in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common type of pancreatic cancer. One reason that immunotherapy fails in PDAC is a lack of immune cell infiltration into the highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment of pancreatic tumors. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that inducing pyroptosis, a specialized form of cell death that generates inflammation and the release of protein signals to activate the immune system, within the tumor microenvironment is one way to promote immune cell infiltration that can lead to an anti-tumor immune response. Unfortunately, there are currently only a few methods to induce pyroptosis in tumors that are toxic and cannot be delivered to the tumor through the blood.

Hirshberg Foundation Seed Grant recipient Lukasz Bugaj, PhD, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at UPENN, and his team have developed an non-invasive method to induce pyroptosis in PDAC tumors using ultrasound. Dr. Bugaj’s lab has developed proteins that can induce pyroptosis when heated by ultrasound energy. In his project, Ultrasound-stimulated systemic clearance of PDAC using mild (4-5℃) heating, Dr. Bugaj and his team will systematically optimize the ultrasound parameters to maximize the pyroptotic killing of PDAC tumors in preclinical models while also measuring immune cell infiltration into tumor post-pyroptosis induction and the ability of the treatment to induce tumor clearance. This work will provide initial evidence that this technique can be beneficial in preclinical models and motivate future studies that include adapting this technique to be evaluated in the clinic.

The Hirshberg Foundation is proud to support Dr. Bugaj’s project with a 2026 Hirshberg Foundation Seed Grant Award to advance immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer. “I am very honored to receive this award and look forward to getting to work,” wrote Dr. Bugaj.