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Michael Kozmaexternally wearable biosensors for the early detection of cancer |
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This week’s spotlight features driven researcher, Michael Kozma, a 5th-year biomedical engineering student. Through the Summer Scholars Program, Kozma was able to fund his ongoing research on externally wearable biosensors for the early detection of cancer in Professor Zhong's lab. Kozma developed the idea with Professor Koh after hearing about her work on flexible electronics. He wanted to find a way to adapt Koh’s sweat sensor to detect biomarkers for cancer in perspiration. With her help, he created a collaborative project between Zhong’s lab and Koh’s lab. According to Kozma, “A lot of people find out that they have the disease too late to implement successful treatment, or they’ve already been diagnosed and are at stage one, but do not have sufficient treatment and monitoring to determine when it gets more aggressive.” Inspired by a technique called ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) Kozma was able to exploit the selectivity of antibodies for specific proteins to identify and track the quantities of specific biomarkers. Using this method, he is able to estimate cancer levels in the body and is planning
to continue work on the development of a wearable device that is economically viable
for public consumption.
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