AML is notoriously difficult to treat due to resistance to CAR T-cell therapies through the process of avidity escape. However, through "avidity enhancement," Maus' team seeks to increase cell-cell binding between tumor and CAR T cells to improve treatment outcomes.

Through the study published in Cancer Cell, Maus and fellow researchers have demonstrated the potential for Lumicks' cell avidity analyzer to assess CAR T cells for variants that have higher avidity. This study enables cell avidity to serve as a biomarker for the success of potential cancer therapies. The Lumicks avidity analyzer uses acoustics to measure interactions between cells, thus highlighting the CAR T cells with high avidity. As a result of this study, Maus' lab intends to streamline the drug development process with less failures and more targeted therapeutic development in a way that enables fast, predictive, and readily reproducible single-cell analysis.