Zhen Xu, the Li Ka Shing Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, has received the 2026 Golden Goose Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Presented annually, the award honors federally funded research “that may have seemed obscure, sounded ‘funny,’ or for which the results were totally unforeseen at the outset, but which ultimately led, often serendipitously, to major breakthroughs that have significant societal impact.”
Dr. Xu has been recognized for inventing histotripsy, an ultrasound-based treatment that destroys tumors without surgery and with few side effects. Along with a team of engineers and doctors, Dr. Xu co-founded HistoSonics to commercialize the histotripsy technology, which received FDA authorization for liver tumors in 2023. Since then, HistoSonics has installed the technology in more than 130 health care systems, and histotripsy has treated more than 5,000 patients around the world.
This fall, the University of Michigan launched the Histotripsy Center. Under Dr. Xu’s direction, the center aims to discover more cancers and other diseases that may be treatable with focused ultrasound.
“Even though it is currently FDA-approved to treat tumors in the liver, it is a platform technology that can be used to treat so many diseases, including various cancer types — for instance, tumors in the kidney, pancreas, breast, prostate, thyroid, skin, sarcoma — and brain diseases like hemorrhagic stroke, brain tumors and epilepsy,” said Dr. Xu. “It can also be combined with cancer drugs and immunotherapy to treat some advanced cancer types that currently don’t have a cure.”
Dr. Xu is a graduate of Southeast University in Nanjing, China. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan.