Jennifer M. Munson, Ph.D.

Jennifer Munson, a cancer researcher at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, describes a novel method for identifying where glioblastoma is likely to recur based on fluid moving through and near the tumor.

Glioblastoma is a devastatingly effective brain cancer. Doctors can cut it out or blast it with radiation, but that only buys time. The cancer has an insidious ability to hide enough tumor cells in tissue around the tumor to allow it to return as deadly as ever.

Patients diagnosed with glioblastoma survive for an average of 15 months.

What’s needed is a better way of identifying those hidden cancer cells and predicting where the tumor might grow next. Jennifer Munson believes she and her research team at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have developed a tool to do just that… Continue reading.

Virginia Tech scientists with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute completed one element of an engineered tissue model that could advance medical and drug testing and provide a new tool for precision medicine

Scientists with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have created an engineered model of the supportive tissue found within a lymph node to study human health.

Working with scientists at the University of Virginia, the researchers are building a bioengineered model of a human lymph node, which performs essential roles in the immune system throughout the body.

The goal of the research, which published in April in APL Bioengineering, is to provide scientists with a model that accurately mirrors dynamic fluid flow — a natural part of how lymph nodes work… Continue reading.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the induction of Jennifer M. Munson, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and Virginia Tech’s Department of Biomedical Engineering & Mechanics to its College of Fellows.

Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to medical and biological engineers, comprised of the top two percent of engineers in these fields. College membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering and medicine research, practice, or education” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education.”

Professor Munson was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows “for the innovative creation of methods to measure, model, and manipulate interstitial fluid flow to study physiological function and disease…. Continue reading.