Research for the Holy Grail

It isn’t a far-fetched fantasy, either, thanks to investigators like Kwong and his colleagues at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Georgia Tech and beyond. Their research in a diverse range of disciplines—including biomedical engineering, immunology, computation and artificial intelligence (AI)—is edging us toward a future in which clinicians can screen for multiple cancers earlier than ever, leading to better treatment outcomes, longer lives and a more robust health care system.

While companies raise billions of dollars to advance cancer detection blood tests, Kwong and fellow Winship researcher Philip Santangelo are leading ongoing multimillion-dollar federal efforts, launched by the Biden Administration, to drastically reduce the cancer mortality rate.

“It’s challenging to detect cancer at its earliest stages, but that is the objective,” says Kwong, a member of Winship’s Cancer Immunology Research Program and an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory and Georgia Tech. “That’s the dream, and it’s within reach.”

Read the full feature in Emory University’s Winship Magazine here.