UVA School of Medicine

14 VIRGINIA MEDICINE For the Love of Science T oday Natasha Sheybani, PhD '20, serves as research director for UVA's new Focused Ultrasound Cancer Immunotherapy Center, but as a 14-year-old, she was a frustrated scientist. Her toy microscope and the experiments she was able to cook up on her own in the family garage weren't enough to satisfy her curiosity. So she started calling labs at the local university until she talked her way into a neurobiology lab where she would come in after school every day to wash beakers, mix up phosphate- buffered saline solution and, eventually, get involved in her first real science project. Now at the age of 26 and with the support of a prestigious NIH Director's Early Independence Award, Sheybani has launched her own independent laboratory as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UVA. The grant — the first ever awarded at UVA — provides $250,000 in direct support to her lab for five years, and the science she's doing is focused on improving the lives of cancer patients. "That grant and the opportunity to come back to UVA as a faculty member has been one of the greatest plot twists in my career trajectory," says Sheybani, who expected to spend four or five years after earning her PhD doing post-doctoral work at Stanford. "I never would have imagined that I could start doing all this important work that I've been so eager to do so soon. I feel really fortunate." With an interest in cancer and image-guided drug delivery technology, Sheybani discovered focused ultrasound (FUS) research at UVA as a graduate student working in the lab of Richard Price, PhD '95. The preclinical work Sheybani did for her dissertation — applying thermally ablative FUS in combination with a chemotherapeutic agent in a mouse model of breast cancer — informed one of the current clinical trials supported by the center. Now her lab is part of the center, exploring the versatile effects of FUS to increase the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy, especially in brain and breast tumors. "There's no question that focused ultrasound has the potential to be a transformative technology for cancer care," she says. "We are leveraging FUS to non-invasively destroy tumors, potentiate targeted drug delivery, and even modulate the immune system. In my lab, we are also thinking about how we can capitalize on tools like blood draws and quantitative imaging to noninvasively monitor the impact of our treatments in cancer patients." As she reflects on that 14-year-old who just couldn't get enough science on her own, Sheybani knows there has been more than luck involved in her success. "I've been very lucky to have had a seat at the table from a young age," Sheybani says. "I've had an incredible cadre of mentors and advocates who heard me, guided me and opened doors at every step of the journey. And I've been proactive and deliberate about my decisions for my career. It's been the perfect combination. Now one of my biggest missions in life is to pay it all forward by sharing this love of science with those whom I have the privilege of mentoring." We are leveraging FUS to non-invasively destroy tumors, potentiate targeted drug delivery, and even modulate the immune system." N A T A S H A S H E Y B A N I , P H D ' 2 0

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