When treating cancer, it is now common to use the body's immune system to help fight the cancer. Some people have been shown to produce an immune response to different cancers and research into these immune responses has led to treatments that use antibodies, interleukin, interferon, TNF, etc. Dr. Michael Campa from Dr. Edward Patz, Jr.'s laboratory in the Duke University Medical School has proposed to use a new microplate reader from BMG LABTECH to investigate one such mechanism. With the help of the new SPECTROstar Nano, Dr. Campa will explore a mechanism that may help to prevent the spread of lung cancer. He and his co-workers recently found an anti-complement factor H (CFH) autoantibody in lung cancer patients whose cancers have not metastasized. He plans to purify and characterize this autoantibody and to determine its role in lung cancer metastasis. You can read his proposal here "Investigating the Antimetastatic Activity of an Autoantibody in Lung Cancer Patients."

"Hearing I had won the last SPECTROstar Nano to be given away by BMG LABTECH was a huge surprise," stated Dr. Campa. "It is indeed a very generous gift and comes at an ideal time. Our laboratory in the Department of Radiology at Duke University Medical Center focuses on the early detection of lung cancer. Our aging plate reader has been locking up recently and most likely won't last much longer. Many of our in vitro assays and quantifications are totally reliant on this plate reader. The SPECTROstar Nano will not only eliminate worries of instrument failure but will allow us to expand into areas of inquiry not possible before. I would like to express my sincere thanks to BMG LABTECH for this fabulous award. I would also like to thank the BMG LABTECH rep at Duke, Scott Klayner, for being such a great resource and friend for all the years we've been acquainted."

For his idea, Dr. Campa is the fifth and final winner in BMG LABTECH's SPECTROstar Nano contest. We want to thank him, as well as the four previous winners, and everyone who submitted a proposal to the contest. As we received so many outstanding proposals on a wide variety of different research topics, it was very difficult to choose the best proposals as winners. We have also chosen a few proposals that we believe deserve an honorable mention.

Visit www.bmglabtech.com/promotion to take a look at all of the proposals from these runners up.