Protein ‘Fingerprinting” for Early Cancer Detection Topic of Brown Bag Lecture

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Shannon Servoss, assistant professor, chemical engineering

Shannon Servoss, assistant professor of chemical engineering, will present a Brown Bag lecture at noon, Nov. 5, in the second floor classroom of the Pat Walker Health Center. The topic is “Fingerprinting in breast cancer cell research.”

Servoss and her team of researchers are building a library of synthetically produced antibodies that can quickly recognize proteins secreted by breast cancer cells, their “protein fingerprint”. This research is intended to help develop a simple blood test that can detect breast cancer at the earliest, cellular, stage -- before it becomes a detectable tumor.

The lecture is a part of the One Book, One Community project, and offers a stark contrast to the research methods described in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.