Ciencia Puerto Rico

The focus of my current project is to develop a hand-held imaging device and cancer-specific imaging agent to assist surgeons during cancer surgery. The system achieves single cell resolution and can detect residual cancer cells left in the patient after the initial tumor resection. The system will ensure that all the cancer cells are removed during surgery, reducing the rates of re-operation and the risks of local recurrence. Results from studies in a cancer model in mice with our collaborators at Duke are published by Mito, Ferrer, et al, "Intraoperative detection and removal of micrcoscopic residual sarcoma using wide-field imaging", Cancer, 2012.

The great success of the project help me raise venture capital funding to start Lumicell Diagnostics. I have written several SBIR proposals which have been funded by NCI (2 awards) and NSF (1 award).