The National Cancer Institute’s Optical Microscopy and Analysis Laboratory is looking for research parties to collaboratively further co-develop software for cancer diagnosis. So far, several genes have been identified that have altered spatial positioning inside the nucleus of breast cancer cells when compared to normal breast tissues.
Researchers are looking at cancer cells that may have disease specific three-dimensional gene arrangements that may help distinguish cancer tissue from normal tissue which may be a novel method to use to diagnose cancer.
The software will provide a set of tools for performing diagnostic or prognostic assays on new unseen datasets. This software could also be used on its own or to supplement and enhance the methods currently used for cancer diagnosis and detection.
The software uses the inherent hierarchy in the data and stores all the analysis and manual interaction information in a highly structured XML file. The file is user-friendly and able to discriminate normal from cancerous human breast tissue section images in large datasets. The software could be used to analyze large datasets and reduce processing time by at least 10 fold.
There are several potential commercial applications. The software technology could play an essential part in the integrated diagnostic or prognostic assay for breast cancer detection, provide a research tool to use for testing new biomarkers and their applicability for cancer diagnosis, and provide important information to enable the understanding of the underlying causes of gene repositioning.
For more information, submit a request form at http://techtransfer.cancer.gov or contact John Hewes, PhD at 301-435-3121 or email hewesj@mail.nih.gov.