Summer/Fall 2009

STORY COMPONENTS   Using the Power of Gold Against Cancer Biomarker Identification Tools Earn Certification Microdevices Separate & Analyze Cancer Cells Breath Test Studied for Detecting Breast Cancer Creating an Ovarian Cancer Detection Tool Robotic Image-Guided Surgical Procedures

More than a third of all Americans – some 120 million people – will be diagnosed with cancer sometime during their lives. Because the odds of survival approach 90 percent if the disease is found early, scientists worldwide are on a quest to develop ways to detect and diagnose cancer early.

photo by Gary Meek Regents' Professor Mostafa El-Sayed and his son, Ivan El-Sayed -- a cancer surgeon at the University of California -- are developing diagnostic and treatment techniques that rely on gold nanoparticles. (300-dpi JPEG)

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers are pursuing many different directions in cancer detection and diagnostic techniques including:

• Using gold nanoparticles to locate and kill cancer cells inside the body;
  
• Creating software programs that improve the process of identifying cancer biomarkers from gene expression data;
  
• Collecting and characterizing tumor cells in a person’s bloodstream with microfluidic devices;
  
• Determining which gases exhaled in a person’s breath indicate the presence of breast cancer;
  
• Detecting ovarian cancer from patterns of metabolites found in a drop of blood; and
  
• Developing algorithms to visualize the prostate in real-time during robotic biopsy and radioactive seed-placement procedures.

This is the second in a series of three reports focusing on cancer research at Georgia Tech. The first, published in the Winter/Spring 2009 issue of Research Horizons, highlighted efforts to understand how cancer arises. The third report will highlight new cancer treatments.