The PI proposes a new paradigm where the presence of lung cancer is detected by analysis of readily accessible histologically normal-appearing buccal cells that are readily obtained by a check swab from the buccal mucosa. This idea is based on Dr. Backman's development of partial wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy, which quantifies statistical properties of nanoscale cell structure. Using PWS, he demonstrated that an increase in the disorder of cell nanoarchitecture is one of the earliest events in carcinogenesis, which precedes any known microscale alterations. Importantly, it is not restricted to tumor cells but also present outside of cancerous or precancerous lesions. In this project they propose to extend this concept to lung cancer: Namely, PWS detection of field effect changes in buccal cells that are associated with lung cancer.
