Purdue Annual Report

] Research that Changes the W  rld Quality of Life Graham Cooks PHOTO BY VINCENT WALTER Mass Spectrometry for Brain Cancer Diagnosis Graham Cooks is convinced his research can have a significant impact across a host of disciplines. Therapeutic drug monitoring. Drug testing. The identification of food-borne pathogens, bacteria, pesticides and explosives residues. Molecular imaging for cancer diagnostics and surgery. One of his latest research tools may help surgeons perform more comprehensive testing of cancerous brain tissue during surgery. The tool relies on an ambient mass spectrometry analysis technique developed by Cooks and his colleagues. Neurosurgery research scientist NathalieAgar from Brigham andWomen's Hospital at Harvard M edical School visits D iscovery Park's Bindley Biosciences C enter as part of her collaborative research with G raham C ooks. 2 PHOTO BY VINCENT WALTER Nathalie Agar Called desorption electrospray ionization, or DESI, the technique involves spraying a microscopic stream of charged solvent onto the tissue surface in order to gather molecular makeup information. A color-coded image reveals the nature and concentration of tumor cells. Already, researchers and physicians at Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School have used the tool to successfully identify the cancer type, grade and tumor margins in five brain surgery patients whose tissue was removed for analysis. "We hope to eventually be able to perform this analysis during surgery to help guide brain surgeons so that the borders of tumors can be identified and the cancer status of a site can be established before any tissue is removed," says Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and winner of the biennial 2013 Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences. Dr. Nathalie Agar, director of the Surgical Molecular Imaging Laboratory within the neurosurgery department at Brigham and Women's Hospital, says the findings showed the analysis method's potential and achieved an important step in the path to assessing its value in improving patient care. "This approach could lead to real-time, image-guided surgery without interference with surgical care and without the administration of labeling agents," says Agar, who co-led the study. "Such extensive and detailed information about the tissue was previously unavailable to surgeons and could lead to more precise tumor removal. In addition, having access to a detailed diagnosis on the day of surgery could help the oncologist more efficiently design the course of adjuvant therapy." LEARN MORE  http://tinyurl.com/ba6neul

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