The September issue of Technology Review magazine listed McCormick Prof. Vadim Backman as one of the world’s top 100 innovators for his development of a light-imaging technique that can detect colon cancer more quickly and accurately than existing methods.
The TR-100 honors the top worldwide innovators younger than 35 years old who “transform technology,” according to the Technology Review Web site. This year, the magazine’s judges chose from a group of more than 700 nominees, Backman said.
Backman’s technique, termed “4D electronic light-scanning fingerprinting” (4D ELF), uses light-scanning techniques to detect whether patients need a colonoscopy. Colon cancer is the second most prevalent cancer among both genders in the United States, after lung cancer.
Backman said the new technique’s accurate and efficient early detection could dramatically decrease the occurrence of colon cancer.
Backman likens the possible effect of his invention to the pap smear, which decreased the incidence of cervical cancer in women from the second most prevalent to the seventh most prevalent cancer.
“If this technique we developed is clinically confirmed and introduced as a screening test, we are hoping to do the same thing as the pap smear did for cervical cancer,” he said.
Currently, Backman said, it is impossible to scan everyone at risk for colon cancer, because the 60 million Americans older than 60 years old are classified automatically as at-risk. Current pre-scanning techniques are inaccurate — resulting in 16 out of 17 unnecessary colonoscopy procedures — and people may be unwilling to undergo the procedure because of its invasive nature, uncomfortable preparation techniques and costs of up to thousands of dollars, he said.
“You cannot do 60 million colonoscopies a year,” he said. “Basically, people are saying that the chances of a colonoscopy picking up (cancer) are so low that (they) don’t want to do it.”
By contrast the new technique is 90 percent accurate, non-invasive and will cost much less than an unneeded colonoscopy, Backman said. 4D ELF takes an optical fingerprint of the inside of the colon and detects miniscule changes anywhere in the surrounding tissue in a matter of seconds, he said.
The technique is not yet approved but has been tested in animals and humans. In the meantime, Backman said he and his team will study the tiny, previously undetectable changes to molecular structure that occur in the earliest stages of carcinogenesis, or cancer production. He compared colon cancer to an iceberg, saying his technique now allows scientists to see below the surface.
“We had been missing all the complexity of carcinogenesis below the water line,” he said. “Now that’s what we’re trying to do, look below the water line.”
Backman is also interested in developing a similar pre-screening technique for pancreatic cancer. Though it is not one of the most prevalent types of cancer, he said, it is almost always fatal and current screening techniques are dangerous for patients.
“If this works, then we will have for the very first time a reliable screening technique for pancreatic cancer, so that patients who have carcinogenesis will have a chance to survive,” he said.
Reach Tina Peng at [email protected].
