Awards

The Romanian researchers Emilia Moroşan and Eric Pop have been awarded yesterday at the White House by the American president Barack Obama during the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers Gala. The PECASE Award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Ten Federal departments and agencies join together annually to nominate the most meritorious scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for assuring America’s preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions. The two Romanians were proposed by the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Strategic Research of the U.S. Air Force.

Emilia Moroşan (34) graduated the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University in Iaşi, Faculty of Physics and worked for an year as a teacher in Romania. Now, she is Assistant Professor of Physics, Astronomy and Chemistry at Rice University, Houston, Texas. She received also the National Science Foundation Career Award.

Eric Pop is Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He received some important prizes, as: NSF Career Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Air Force Young Investigator Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award.

A device that detects cancer in 6 minutes

Cancer strikes without mercy; doesn't matter who you are and what you did - everything happens with devastating speed. The most times, it is a war with one winner: death. Each year, eight million people die of cancer in the world. More than those killed by HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Annually 12 million people are stroked by this disease. In the U.S., cancer kills 1,500 people a day and is the second most prevalent disease after heart disease. In Romania, the latest statistics monitors 420,000 patients, and are diagnosed annually between 95,000 and 96,000 other people, of which more than half in an incurable phase. The number of patients increases, however, by 8-10% every year.

However, the problem has a much closer solution than we imagine. The Romanian engineer, researcher and businessman Tudor Mircea (53), owner of MB Technology, will release in 2011 the first device that will detect the predisposition for cancer in the very early stages, when treatment is more effective and easier to apply . The device identifies in a blood sample, in four to six minutes, the specific bio-markers of cancer, six months before the disease begins. The MB Technology team works with the Romanian researcher Raluca van Staden, the inventor of a revolutionary sensor for cancer detection, and the device is registered as a common patent.

In a first stage, the device may provide clues to susceptibility for four types of cancer: gastrointestinal, breast, prostate and ovarian cancer. The prototype will be validate by the end of 2010, then the device will enter clinical testing, and in mid 2011 will come into production. MB Technology is working on three versions: the simpler, for mass production (which will cost less than EUR 1,000), a medium variant, for medical offices (EUR 5000-6000) and a laboratory version, with maximum capacity of processing and entering into the detection area (EUR 20,000 to 25,000). Thus, cancer test could be done by anyone, even at home - and that could save millions of lives. Early detection of cancer is an important step in clinical diagnosis because it reduces the number of patients. There is medication for this early stage of cancer that can cure from 80% to 100% of the patients.

The device includes three components: the sensor itself (which can be used for about a hundred tests), covered by a round semi-elastic plastic hood; the input preamplifier input; the data processing unit. One drop of blood is placed on the sensor and the analysis sequence triggers automatically (it takes four to six minutes). Showing results can be achieved in three ways. The basic version offers only quantitative results (YES or NO), the medium variant displays he concentration and the type of bio-marker, while the laboratory version allows the user access to plasmograma. About 85% of production will be exported, mainly to USA, Germany and Israel.

Images from here.