Suffolk Reporter

A research initiative at Stony Brook University, led by Eric Brouzes, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a grant from the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The project aims to address healthcare inequalities in cervical cancer diagnostics with a focus on developing new testing methods that do not require expensive equipment.

The research project received a two-year grant of $50,000 per year. Brouzes explained, “We’ve been developing some unrelated technologies, and we saw a new way of running quantitative tests. What is critical about that novelty was that we could use it without equipment. This led us to diagnostic problems in low-resource settings, and one particular issue that came up was cervical cancer."

Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer; however, current tests only determine if a person is positive or negative for the virus. The research team is working on a molecular test to directly assess cervical cancer risk.

“The predictive value of HPV tests is currently pretty poor,” said Brouzes. “They have a very good predictive negative value... But it cannot pinpoint who is going to develop cancer.”

Kenneth Shroyer, chair of the Department of Pathology, noted the significance of this work: “While negative HPV test results can help rule out cervical cancer... Dr. Brouzes and his team aim to develop a point-of-care device that could identify HPV positive cases that are at greatest risk for progression to cancer."

The ultimate goal is to create an affordable and accurate diagnostic kit for cervical cancer that can be used without expensive equipment, thus improving healthcare access in underserved communities.

Brouzes emphasized the importance of early detection: “The issue is in communities that don’t have access to healthcare... So we started our proposal with ‘no women should die of cervical cancer today’.”

— Angelina Livigni