BizTucson Highlights Barton's Team Effort to Detect, Defeat Ovarian Cancer

Professor Jennifer Barton's cross-disciplinary research into early detection of ovarian cancer is garnering notice – most recently in a cover story in the spring 2017 issue of BizTucson magazine.

Barton, who also serves as interim director of the BIO5 Institute, is presently working on a millimeter-scale endoscope called a salpingoscope alongside collaborators in the UA colleges of optical sciences and medicine.

The salpingoscope was first developed with funding from a nearly $1.3 million National Institutes of Health grant. The research team – which includes "engineering students, physiology students, optical science students and medical residents," Barton said – is now working to enhance the device for improved "high-sensitivity, high-resolution imaging of the Fallopian tube, ovaries and uterine wall."

"Concurrent to advancing the basic biology research on ovarian cancer development and improving the device's imaging capabilities is a search for an outside commercial partner to provide engineering and manufacturing," Barton added.

Barton is also collaborating with professor Raymond Kostuk in the department of electrical and computer engineering on a separate detection method based on a volume holographic imaging system.