MSU professor wins top national recognition for cancer detecting technology
MSU professor wins top national recognition for cancer detecting technology
Publish Date: 2026-05-21 14:08:00
Source Domain: www.mpbonline.org
“I got an email saying that the office of Congresswoman Cindy Hyde-Smith had asked about several intellectual properties that came out of the state, and they had chosen my intellectual property work,” said Scott, an MSU associate professor of chemistry.
While Scott said her work is still in development, she is being recognized for her team’s discovery of a new class of shortwave infrared (SWIR) imaging dyes.
“We have some data, but we’re still working on some more data. And it involves us trying to detect cancer cells selectively,” she said. “The reason is that we want to be able to differentiate normal cells from cancer cells.
Scott’s technology aims to accurately determine the boundaries of cancerous tumors in deep tissue, something she believes surgeons have long struggled with.
“It’s like a mountain, right? So when you get to the bottom, how do you know where it actually stops because it blends right into the valley,” she said.
Surgeons will often cut into extra tissue around tumors, trying to extract dangerous residual cells, following these interventions with chemotherapy or radiation therapy. It’s not a failproof system.
“If they miss cells, those cells can regrow and they tend to be more aggressive when they come back,” said Scott.
Her technology uses special dyes injected into deep tissue and low infrared rays to specifically detect cancer cells without surgically cutting into patients. Currently, CT scans and PET scans can look for tumors, but may not be able to accurately analyze the full boundary of a tumor. Currently, surgeons have been applying stains directly to tissue, but remaining cancer cells may still be hard to detect after intervention efforts and treatment.
“Either they missed it in the original treatment or it had already metastasized and spread. They just don’t have a way to detect it at the moment until it starts growing back, and then by that time it’s too late,” said Scott. “So, we just need a better way of…
