At UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Dr. Benjamin Ellingson and his team are looking inside glioblastoma tumors with a precision that standard brain scans simply cannot achieve. Rather than seeing only the outline of a tumor, they're now mapping its blood vessels, measuring oxygen levels, tracking drug distribution, and studying the complex ecosystem of cells that surrounds cancer tissue—all in real time.
Glioblastoma is one of the most treatment-resistant brain tumors in existence, and much of that resistance comes from its unique tumor microenvironment, the intricate network of cells and biological activity that surrounds and supports the cancer. Understanding this environment is critical because it fundamentally shapes how the tumor grows and responds to therapy. But there's a major challenge: unlike breast cancer or lung cancer, doctors cannot repeatedly biopsy the brain to watch how tumors change. Imaging becomes the window into what's actually happening inside.
Ellingson, director of the UCLA Brain Tumor Imaging Laboratory and professor of radiological sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, trained as a biomedical engineer originally focused on brain injury and spinal cord trauma. During postdoctoral work, he began applying those same imaging tools to cancer research, and the human dimension of the work pulled him in. "I really fell in love with the patients and the collaborative environment in cancer research," he says. "People are all working together toward solutions."
His lab has developed advanced MRI and PET imaging techniques that go far beyond what a standard scan reveals. With advanced perfusion imaging, clinicians can now measure the size, shape, and architecture of blood vessels inside tumors in a single contrast injection—and determine how leaky those vessels are, which affects how drugs reach the cancer. Metabolic imaging approaches allow the team to study whether a tumor is hypoxic, oxygen-starved, or acidic; these conditions influence how aggressive the cancer becomes and whether it will respond to treatment.
The work spans the entire drug development pipeline. In early stages, when researchers are testing whether a new drug actually hits its target, Ellingson's team develops imaging tools to visualize how the drug changes tumor vascularity, cellularity, metabolism, and physiology. As promising treatments move into clinical trials, those same imaging approaches monitor how tumors respond over time. A tumor that doesn't immediately shrink might still be responding meaningfully if its growth slows or stabilizes—and advanced imaging reveals the difference.
Glioblastoma presents a particular challenge because different regions of the same tumor often behave very differently from each other. Standard imaging misses that internal heterogeneity. Advanced techniques capture it. This granular understanding feeds directly into more personalized treatment strategies tailored to individual tumor biology.
Beyond his own lab, Ellingson leads imaging efforts for major multicenter brain tumor clinical trials and collaborates closely with researchers developing new therapies. His optimism about progress in the field is grounded in what these imaging advances make possible: the ability to see inside a tumor's microenvironment, understand how treatment is actually working, and ultimately help each patient get the therapy most likely to help them survive.