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W&L Professor Details Cancer Detection Research In Article
Jay Margalus, Johnson Professor of Entrepreneurship and Leadership and director of the Connolly Center for Entrepreneurship at Washington and Lee University, recently authored a collaborative article in the September 2024 issue of The Lancet Discovery Science Journal eBioMedicine.
Margalus authored the article alongside 11 additional researchers from the University of Chicago, Geisinger Cancer Institute, DePaul University, the University of Wisconsin and the University Hospital RWTH Aachen in Germany.
The article, “Developing a low-cost, open-source, locally manufactured workstation and computational pipeline for automated histopathology evaluation using deep learning,” details Margalus’ collaborative work on low-cost cancer screening and imaging equipment. It discusses the deployment and access to equitable global cancer care in low-resource settings.
“I’m especially proud to have my former student at DePaul, Amelia Schroeder, contribute to this article and hope to continue similar work at Washington and Lee,” said Margalus. “Creating pathways for students to collaborate on innovative, and potentially transformative, work like this is why I got into higher education. It’s always about the students and effecting change.”
To make preventative equipment more accessible, Margalus worked in collaboration with oncologists from the University of Chicago to develop an inexpensive solution for early cancer detection. The group recently developed a low-cost microscope that leverages machine learning to assist in early cancer detection in the head and neck area for as little as $230. Previously, the least expensive option for this type of imaging would cost $250,000. Margalus began his work at W&L in July 2023 after serving as the faculty director of maker innovation at DePaul University’s Idea Realization Labs.
