"This award is co-funded by NSF?s International Science and Engineering Section, Office of International and Integrative Activities."
This project is to test and validate an optical technology, partial wave spectroscopic microscopy (PWS), as a first-tier screening tool for pancreatic cancer in a relatively large cohort. PWS allows for the measurement of statistical properties of the spatial arrangement of intracellular macromolecular density at the sub-diffractional length scales, i.e. nanoscale. Thus, PWS probes cellular nanoarchitecture, the fundamental level of intracellular organization at the level from macromolecular structures to small organelles. Using PWS, they demonstrated an increase in the disorder of nuclear nanoarchitecture in the earliest stages of carcinogenesis manifested as an alteration of the higher-order chromatin structure. This phenomenon was observed in multiple cancer types (lung, colon, pancreatic, esophageal, ovarian and thyroid cancers). In this project, taking advantage of an existing established US-China collaborative team via a National Cancer Institute funded gastric cancer project, and large patients? pool in Shanghai, China, this project will study PWS as a potential early detection marker for pancreatic cancer in Chinese patients. It will also study epigenetic mechanisms of how changes in higher order chromatin structure modulate gene transcription. From the educational perspective, the project will provide opportunities in truly interdisciplinary research at the interface of biophotonics, molecular biophysics, cancer epidemiology, cancer biology, and medicine for postdoctoral fellows, and graduate, undergraduate and high school students with a particular focus on recruitment of women and minorities in science. The findings will be incorporated into four graduate classes directed by the PIs. The findings and data generated during the course of the project will be disseminated to the scientific community. The main findings will also be disseminated to the general public.
