Chemistry professor in 14th year of cancer research

The American Cancer Society expects about 1,529,560 new cancer cases in 2010. This means roughly 1.5 million people are at risk for their lives. Almost 1.5 million people will have to tell their loved ones they may not make it past another five years.

Many individuals will be lucky enough to discover the tumors in the early stages; however some may not be as fortunate. But a non-invasive way to detect these tumors early on for everyone may soon give rise in the medical world.

Dr. Kevin Belfield, professor of chemistry and chairman of the chemistry department, along with his group of researchers are working on just that.

Belfield and his team have been working with two-photon absorption for 14 years. This means they are capable of using infrared lights for bioimaging purposes, such as early detection of tumors.

"It allows nice three-dimensional imaging capabilities. And we realized early on there was a huge opportunity in bioimaging," Belfield said. "Our recent work in the past six years has been based on developing probes for early cancer detection and for lysosome selectivity."

The team is also very enthusiastic about the work they are doing.

Going into one of their labs, it's easy to see all of the careful detail and thought that goes into their research. It's also very obvious how much they enjoy their work.

Dr. Sheng Yao, senior scientist and organic chemist in the research group, shares the same interest with Belfield in the progress of their work.

He also is working toward the imaging portion of the research and is hoping to better improve what they have already accomplished.

Studies show early detection of cancer can be equated with a stronger chance of survival.

"What motivated us really is the facts and figures on cancer detection versus survival," Belfield said. "Cancer has four stages; it's kind of the progressive stages of cancer, stage one being the early stage and stage four being the last stage."

Belfield and his team based their research on a study they found about different types of cancer and their survival rates at different stages over a five-year period.

"For us, what was quite compelling was to learn that in stage four, where currently the majority of many types of cancers are diagnosed, the prognosis or the percentage of people who survive beyond five years is small," Belfield said. "What's also interesting is, as one might expect, as you go earlier and earlier and cancer is diagnosed in the earlier stages, particularly in stage one, the prognosis is really good; it's over 90 percent, almost 100 percent of the people will survive five years or more."

The goal of Belfield and his team is to develop probes detecting different markers in the development of tumors.

They are also working on targeting the biomarkers in the vasculature of the tumors and to develop probes that target different organelles in cells that lead to diseases like cancer.

"Until now, most of the fluorescent probes that have been developed and used for biological imaging aren't very stable, and they undergo what's called photobleaching very quickly," Belfield said. "Meaning, once you image them, if you go back to image that same area, typically that area is bleached and either you don't see it or the image quality is very poor, and if you were to go back and image it again you wouldn't see anything.

"So we develop probes that have high photo stability."

Using these probes can help many individuals fighting cancer.

Because they allow early detection, many people will have the possible opportunity of getting tumors surgically removed rather than going through chemotherapy or radiation.

"It turns out the same targeting ability we have to detect the tumors, we're also looking at these as these being a tool for image-guided surgery," Belfield  said. "So the surgeon, while they're operating, can literally scan the near-infrared light through the tissue and will be able to detect the fluorescence and see where they need to cut.

"If it only targets tumor tissue and not healthy tissue, then that's how they'll know where to cut."