• Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Davis
• Ph.D., Inorganic Chemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• B.A., Chemistry, University of Minnesota-Morris

The surgical removal of tumors is a common way to combat cancer. Completely removing tumors is critical to prevent tumor recurrence, but removing too much of the tissue can harm the patient. Our collaborators at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (Dr. Aaron Mohs, Dr. Denis Svechkarev) have developed a "cut-by-color" method that applies a fluorescent dye to a tumor, thus providing a glowing beacon for the surgeon to efficiently cut out the tumor.

Nucleotide sequences (aptamers) have been developed in other labs that bind strongly and selectively to biological targets, such as extracellular proteins. We have developed a number of methods to chemically combine aptamers with highly fluorescent quantom dots (QDs), thus creating the fluorescent dye for the cut-by-color method that is highly specific to a particular type of cancer. We plan to optimize the conditions for synthesizing the QD-aptamer conjugates, test their binding affinity for cells that contain the target proteins, and test their binding affinity to detect cancer in tissue samples, such as tissue microarrays.