The head of the Knight Cancer Institute's early detection program, Sadik Esener
Courtesy OHSU
The
announced the leader of its early detection program Monday.
The institute picked a professor of nano-engineering from the University of San Diego — Sadik Esener.
He’s known for using microchips to diagnose medical issues and for creating so called "smart bullets," which are nano-scale cancer-fighting drugs that are delivered directly to a tumor cell.
He said he plans to focus on the difference between benign, slow growing cancers and fast growing, malignant cancers that kill.
“We are starting to see some tools, some technologies, that are going to enable us hopefully to do this differentiation — between aggressive and non-aggressive cancers. Hopefully within the next several years,” he said.
After raising more than $1 billion, the institute is in the midst of recruiting up to 300 scientists with the aim of radically transforming the early detection of lethal cancers.