Cancer Detection
What if it were possible to go to the store and buy a kit to quickly and accurately diagnose cancer, similar to a home pregnancy test? A University of Missouri researcher is developing a tiny sensor, known as an acoustic resonant sensor, that is smaller than a human hair and could test bodily fluids for a variety of diseases, including breast and prostate cancers.
One interesting aspect of his work is that, while Jae Wan Kwong is indeed a doctor, he’s not a physician— he holds a PhD and teaches electrical and computer engineering at MU.
“In a liquid environment,” Kwong says, “most sensors experience a significant loss of signal quality, but by using highly sensitive, low-signal-loss acoustic resonant sensors in a liquid, these substances can be effectively and quickly detected—a brand-new concept that will result in a noninvasive approach for breast-cancer detection.”
Finger-Licking Soy
Fu-Hung Hsieh, a professor of biological engineering and food science at MU, has a different take on whether the chicken or the egg came first. He thinks the correct answer may be: the soybean. He’s trying to produce low-cost soy substitute for chicken by doing more than adding color and flavor to soy. If you’ve ever tasted “chicken”-flavored soy, you know why his work could hold promise.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Illinois-Missouri Biotechnology Alliance are funding his project, which has had some early success. The results, though, sent him back to the drawing board, because the product tasted more like … turkey. Foods made from soy contain important nutritional elements, some of which help maintain healthy bones and prevent a range of cancers, including prostate, breast and colorectal. Perhaps more important, though, could be the dietary contribution that a tasty soy-based alternative to poultry could help Americans combat record levels of obesity.
Food for thought, anyway.
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Bacon Heaven
K-State researcher Raymond Rowland just might be the patron saint of bacon-lovers everywhere. A national expert in the study of PRRSV, a virus that imposes annual losses of $560 million on swine herds, Rowland has been something of a cash cow for pork-related research efforts in Manhattan. Among a wide range of his projects is one funded by a federal Department of Agriculture grant of $2.5 million and $250,000 from the National Pork Board. It has him teamed up with K-State’s James Murphy in an attempt to track down the genetic roots of PRRSV. Rowland and Murphy, if successful in identifying the factors involved, could open the door
for the creation of a vaccine to combat the virus.
Their work is just part of a wide range of K-State research projects focused on animal health—research that has real-world implications for the nation’s livestock herds. But it has global implications, as well: The U.S. accounts for roughly 25 percent of the pork on the world market, and pork exports run about $4 billion annually.
Stem Cells, Sans Controversy
The KU Cancer Center is the higher-profile institution, but the fight against cancer offers plenty of research work to go around. Kansas State University is also part of that fight with studies taking place at its Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Project for Pancreatic Cancer. Working with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, researchers hope to demonstrate that gene therapy using umbilical-cord stem cells, can improve the treatment of pancreatic cancer. A by-product of that research: The team also expects to develop a new strain of genetically engineered rats that will serve as a model of human pancreatic cancer.
Perhaps as innovative as the scientific approach involved has been the political one: stem cells gathered from umbilical cord blood raise none of the moral objections attached to use of embryonic stem cells, are much cheaper to acquire, and can be harvested not only in large numbers, but relatively easily.
UMKC
Combating Shock
Every year, the twin killers of septic and hemorrhagic shock claim the lives of 200,000 Americans. Often the result of a traumatic injury, shock by its medical definition is abnormally low blood pressure caused by poor blood flow. The lack of flow to the liver, kidney, intestine, and brain can cause a wide range of maladies.
That gives you a sense of mission for those who are working at UMKC’s Shock Trauma Research Center. Funded by more than $600,000 annually in research grant support from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Sosland Foundation, and other organizations, they are exploring ways to combat the effects of shock. One way is by helping the body
identify infecting microbes—taking the science of medicine to the molecular level.
By measuring white-cell responses to various infectious agents, researchers are trying to formulate molecular inhibitors, restoring vital oxygen to affected parts of the body. That could lead to development of drugs to improve treatments for patients with sepsis.
Dental Safety
When you head for the dentist to get a cavity filled, the last thing you’re probably thinking about is whether he’s using materials that are safe. But the wide range of resins, sealants, fillings and more—many from sources outside the control of federal regulators in the U.S.—can pose risks. Reducing them has been the goal of researchers at UMKC’s School of Pharmacy and School of Dentistry. Among other focuses within the schools, they have explored the safety testing of experimental dental resins and composites. They also contract to do toxicology testing for businesses in the region, generally at costs lower than having similar tests done by private companies.
THE STOWERS INSTITUTE
Paying it Forward
The 800-pound research gorilla in Kansas City is the Stowers Institute, which dramatically raised the profile of life-sciences research here when its first researchers came on board in 2000. Today, it continues to lead the way in lab studies of everything from cell differentiation in human zygotes to the biology of fruit flies. It also incorporates a program to expose area science teachers—and by extension, their students—to the laboratory practice of life sciences research. Its innovative STARS program, for Science Teachers Access to Research at Stowers, brings in high school and community college teachers for workshops that expose them to the latest in research tools and techniques.
Stowers’ support for the development of tomorrow’s researchers pays off for the region by exposing teachers to hands-on science that they can take back into their own classrooms, said Eric Kessler, who teaches in the Blue Valley school district: “For the average teacher in high school biology or a science classroom, there’s an education gap between what we’re trying to teach in advanced-placement biology and what many of us received in our own education,” Kessler said. The Stowers program, he said, “allows us to expand our own knowledge.”
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH
Cardiac Cooperation
Five years ago, the Time to Get it Right report on life-sciences initiatives in Kansas City called for more collaboration by regional institutions to advance a broader community goal. One sterling example of such cooperation is in clinical and translational research involving cardiac cases. Among the players in that effort: the Mid America Heart Institute at Saint Luke’s Hospital, Truman Medical Center, Midwest Research Institute and the Schools of Medicine, Arts and Sciences and Nursing at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, as well as its Computing and Engineering School.
The participating organizations call this project the country’s leading effort to define patient and treatment characteristics for those who have cardiovascular disease—the most common cause of death for Americans.
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