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MAY 8, 2008

Meeting of the minds
A scientist and surgeon at CHOC team up to research a trailblazing technique in pediatric tumor diagnosis.
By Steve Eddy

One is a research scientist who was disaffected with turn-a-profit-now industrial work. The other is a noted pediatric surgeon who wants to make surgery as noninvasive and painless for children as possible.

And they have united in a common goal: to take an 80-year-old discovery in physics and bring it into the operating room.

The proving ground of Chad Lieber and Dr. Mustafa Kabeer is Children’s Hospital of Orange County, where the CHOC Research Institute sponsors work that explores potential uses of Raman spectroscopy. Their work could end up putting CHOC in the national spotlight.

Discovered in 1928 by Indian physicist C.V. Raman, the technique involves measuring the wavelength and intensity of inelastically scattered light from molecules. What it can do, the researchers believe, is provide real-time information about tumors, without violating the tumor itself via a traditional biopsy. And that can forestall complications (like breaking off part of the tumor and allowing cancerous cells to move elsewhere in the body). It might even have implications for tailoring chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

“Very few people even know about the technique,” says Lieber, who holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University.

The few scientists studying medical uses have been concentrating on adults. Lieber and Kabeer plan to develop a database of tumors in pediatric cases – much like the fingerprint databases used by law enforcement – to find patterns.

“So, in the future, we can have an unknown piece of tissue and say, ‘Which fingerprint does it correspond to? Is it a neuroblastoma? Is it a lymphoma?’ ” Lieber says.

Their union was fortuitous. Lieber had done academic research before moving into the industry, and he heard there was an interested
physician at CHOC. While at Wayne State University, Kabeer had explored the potential use of Raman spectroscopy with a physicist in the engineering school.

Lieber says the research is part of his position; Kabeer helps voluntarily, finding time in his busy surgical schedule. And they make a good team, he says. “Mustafa wants to pull as much as I want to push,” Lieber says. “CHOC gave us enough money to get off the ground. Now, it’s up to us to keep flying.” OCM

Steve Eddy is OC METRO Business Magazine’s technology columnist.