Helping breast cancer surgery patients avoid the need for a second operation is the goal of a research project now underway in the laboratory of Dr. Sarah Blair, Assistant Professor of Surgery/Breast Specialties at UCSD.
“The main problem for breast conservation surgery is having to reoperate on patients who have positive margins,” Dr. Blair said. Currently, it takes approximately a week to determine whether the tissue samples from the surgical margins are positive for cancer cells. If cancer cells are detected, the patient may have to undergo a second operation to remove them.
In collaboration with Calit2 at UCSD, Dr. Blair and her research team are developing a tool that could make it possible to perform definite pathological analyses of tissue quickly in the operating room. If any margins are positive for cancer cells, the affected tissue can be removed then and there.
Dr. Blair and her team just completed the first year of the three-year project, which is funded by the Department of Defense.
In September, Dr. Blair’s research project received a boon with the delivery of a new, automated microscope to perform the tissue analyses. The Zeiss AxioImager Model Z1, pictured with Dr. Blair above, is equipped with a digital camera, and will operate with custom software created by Dr. Blair’s team.
The microscope was funded by the Department of Defense, Calit2, and donations from patients.
Calit2 is the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a multidisciplinary research partnership between UCSD and UC Irvine. Calit2’s mission is to bring researchers from different disciplines together in creative investigations.
Dr. Blair’s research is a Calit2 project, part of the Nanomedicine Laboratory of California and affiliated with the Nanotumor Center of Excellence of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. Calit2 provides funding, laboratory space, and staff for the project.
“It’s an example of the interdependence of the School of Medicine and Calit2,” said Dr. Blair, whose project is a collaboration of many disciplines. Her research team includes specialists in medicine, engineering, biology, pathology, chemistry, and physics.