Professor Kirill Alexandrov, an Australian National Breast Cancer Foundation funded researcher at The University of Queensland, approaches breast cancer research from a biotechnology perspective – looking at how technology can help us better understand our bodies and detect abnormalities in simple yet effective ways.
Professor Alexandrov’s team at UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology includes biochemists, protein engineers, electronic engineers and computer scientists who are applying engineering principles to biology, to develop diagnostic tools for many diseases, including breast cancer.
Cancer is very complex with a lot of individual diversities and uncertainties. It’s important for patients and for their treating doctors to understand what cancer they have, how it is progressing, what is changing, and how it responds to treatment.
Access to real-time information for each of these stages would help both patient and doctor have more control over the situation.
Prof Alexandrov’s lab is simultaneously working towards identifying a breast cancer biomarker in the blood, developing a blood test, and creating the technology that will ‘read’ the blood and detect tumour markers.