Dr. James Tunnell was recently selected to receive the 2010 Rice University Bioengineering Outstanding Graduate Alumnus Award.
Dr. James Tunnell was recently selected to receive the 2010 Rice University Bioengineering Outstanding Graduate Alumnus Award. The award will be presented on October 7, 2010 and recognizes Tunnell, a 2002 Ph.D. bioengineering graduate of Rice University, for his national leadership on researching ways to develop minimally invasive optical technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of disease, specifically for early cancer.
Through his research, Tunnell and his student researchers developed an affordable, noninvasive way to detect skin cancer—a method that uses a pen-size, light-based technology to determine in a matter of seconds whether skin cancer is present on a patient. The new detection method could serve as an alternative to costly and painful biopsies that doctors have historically relied on to test for skin cancer.
The device was featured in BusinessWeek magazine last year and named as one of the “20 most important inventions of the next 10 years.”
A startup company, DermDx Inc., is currently conducting clinical validation studies of the device and more than 100 patients have undergone the simple exam so far at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and UT Southwestern Medical Center, Austin Initiatives.
Following completion of the initial clinical trials of the technique, DermDx Inc. will conduct larger scale device trials and seek FDA approval. A commercial version of the device would then be marketed first in the United States.
Tunnell and his Biophotonics Laboratory were also recently awarded grants totaling more than $1.1 million to further cancer research. The lab has been conducting research on early skin cancer detection devices as well as a combined imaging and treatment system for pancreatic cancer.
The Outstanding Graduate Alumnus Award will be presented to Tunnell during the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting at 8 p.m. on October 7, 2010.
