Interrogating the Cellular Impact of Sonodynamic Therapy on Glioma Cells; Barriers to Better Health: Examining Systemic Failures in the U.S. Healthcare System

The United States healthcare system is predicated upon stringent cooperation among a variety of actors, often obfuscating patient understanding and limiting the effectiveness of treatments. Despite significant financial investment, clinical outcomes do not compare to those of similarly wealthy countries. Through no fault of their own, physicians and patients alike are unable to reach the successes that are much more common within other national healthcare systems. My STS research paper examines potential causes and solutions to this identified disparity. My technical paper enabled me to explore the environment of preclinical research first-hand, investigating a novel treatment for glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that is among the most fatal of all cancers. A crucial step towards new and improved therapy occurs outside the hospital in research labs, where attempts are made to discover new methods of treatment. This work can be expensive, difficult, and highly regulated. Balancing the allocation of resources and the timely process of advancing therapies in clinical trials is key to the eventual outcomes of patients, and also a critical problem identified in my STS paper. In this manner, the process and results of pre-clinical research described in my technical paper share a direct link to the overall effectiveness of healthcare afforded to patients, as characterized in my STS paper.
In my STS research, I applied multi-level perspective theory to the United States healthcare system, which informed my analysis of its complicated network of participatory parties. I focused on both qualitative and quantitative reports of patient and physician experiences, ultimately uncovering several areas of poor outcomes related to patient autonomy, financial toxicity, and exacerbated inequitable experiences among minority groups. Similarly, I gathered data reported by government agencies regarding the allocation of funds into our healthcare system, finding that inefficiency was common. Finally, I applied several case studies imploring how the healthcare systems in other countries, and even through periods of change in our own system, have successful ideas that we can build upon in a reconstructed system.

My technical research into sonodynamic therapy for the treatment of glioblastoma revealed the potential efficacy of this novel treatment. As it currently stands, patients with glioblastoma have few treatment options, none of which appreciably extend their expected lifetime. Methods like chemotherapy and surgery are risky, invasive, and expensive. A new treatment is currently being researched that is both non-ionizing, and completely non-invasive with the potential to target the cancer cells specifically. Utilizing a combination of a sonosensitive drug and focused-ultrasound, my research team was able to uncover a treatment regimen that found a statistically significant decrease in cancer cells, without affecting untargeted cells. We were able to achieve this in part via our custom construction of a 3D-printed system that allowed us to gain a higher degree of control over the application of the ultrasound. We underwent several protocol revisions in our post-treatment analysis to finetune and decrease the variability within our cell viability results.

I believe that the research I conducted made significant strides within my overall problem frame, analyzing barriers to health within the United States healthcare system. I showed specific areas of spending within our system that far supersede that of other countries and performed case studies of potential regulatory oversight, as well as identifying positive attributes from successful policies. Further steps in this research should continue to examine successful examples of healthcare policy enacted across history, identifying where current improvements can be made. My technical research made initial strides into the efficacy of sonodynamic therapy, and the next steps would be to move the experiments to a more complex model. While my research was conducted in-vitro, moving to a mouse model, and eventual human clinical trials would be the natural research progression.

I would like to thank my professors and capstone advisors, Dr. Caitlin Wylie and Dr. Natasha Sheybani for their incredible support throughout this process. Through their guidance, my research was able to get off the ground. My technical research partner Justin Vinh was also a huge help, as he taught me many research techniques and was always there with me through the research process, no matter how challenging it became. Lastly, I want to thank my friends and family for their unwavering support throughout.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering

Technical Advisor: Natasha Sheybani

STS Advisor: Caitlin Wylie

Technical Team Members: Justin Vinh