A doctoral student at North Dakota State University is making strides in the field of Biomedical Engineering, with the development of a cancer detection technology.
Mahek Sadiq is a fourth year doctoral student at NDSU. She was raised in a family of medical professionals, and was inspired to focus her research on cancer detection after witnessing patients be diagnosed with late-stage cancers. Her findings culminated in the development and use of chemiresistive biosensors to detect even tiny cancer specimens. Sadiq says this technology will be instrumental in early detection of, for example – pancreatic cancer – which can have no symptoms until it’s too late.
"It senses the chemical, and develops the signal in terms of resistance change. So once we tested with the specimen, it immediately responded to it, and showed a good amount of resistance change, indicating there was a presence of cancer. So that will help us to develop pancreatic cancer at a very early stage, which will help us save lives."
Sadiq says her research also extends into tissue regeneration, to both facilitate tissue regrowth and monitor for the emergence or relapse of the cancer cells.