New breast cancer treatments and biodegradable Mardi Gras beads are a couple of the dozen inventions the LSU Board of Supervisors voted to fund through its Leverage Innovation for Technology Transfer, or LIFT2, grants, according to an LSU announcement.
In total, the LSU Research and Technology Foundation passed out $521,202 in LIFT2 grant money to the 12 research projects selected during the program’s eighth funding cycle.
More than $4 million in competitive grants—awarded twice a year in amounts up to $50,000—have been awarded since 2014 to academic researchers across the LSU campuses for their 108 innovations.
Shengli Dong, a postdoctoral researcher at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, received a $50,000 grant to study how to improve existing breast cancer medications. He’s already discovered that, after enough manipulation, his team can kill a certain protein found in triple negative breast cancer cells and prevent the cancer from spreading.
Another grant recipient, LSU Department of Biological Sciences professor Naohiro Kato, will use his $49,500 LIFT2 grant to further develop and prototype biodegradable Mardi Gras beads made from algae, which could offer an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic beads, which have notoriously clogged New Orleans drainage systems.
