by Jen Uscher
Rebekah Drezek
Age: 33
Position: Bioengineer, Rice University, Houston
CV: Drezek studied electrical engineering as an undergraduate at Duke University and received master’s and doctoral degrees (1998 and 2001) in electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2002, she joined the faculty at Rice University and started her own lab.
Why the Buzz: The optical instruments that Rebekah Drezek is creating may not only help doctors detect breast and ovarian cancers earlier, they will someday allow for less expensive and less invasive diagnostic procedures than those in use today. This year she received a $3 million Era of Hope Scholar Award from the Department of Defense’s Breast Cancer Research Program to support her work developing miniaturized imaging tools, such as needle-sized fiber optic probes. Within five to ten years, doctors could be using the probes – which provide high-resolution, real-time images of tissue – to examine breast tissue (possibly averting the need for a biopsy), guide surgery, and monitor the effectiveness of drug treatments or radiation therapy. At the same time, Drezek is creating a customized probe to screen for ovarian cancer in high-risk patients.
Drezek is also engineering nanoscale particles – tiny gold-coated silica spheres – to be applied to or injected into the body, where they would recognize the molecular features of specific types of cancer (for example, breast cancer) and attach to the cancer cells. When illuminated with a laser, these particles would glow brightly, helping surgeons see the borders of a tumor during surgery, greatly increasing the odds that all cancerous cells will be removed. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, chair of bioengineering at Rice University and Drezek’s Ph.D. advisor at UT Austin, says, “Before long, I think you’ll be seeing doctors using the techniques Rebekah is developing now.”