December 18th, 2024
The SAMKOE Lab has been awarded funding for a Cancer Center Development Pilot Project, titled, “Investigation into Tumor Precursor Field Driven Recurrence in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Using a Cohort of FFPE Tumors.” The team will be retrospectively testing human oral squamous cell carcinomas for the presence of tumor precursor fields using both immunohistochemical and genetic techniques.
December 13th, 2024
Friday the 13th was a lucky day in the SAMKOE Lab! Our team, lead by Wisse Haakma, has been selected to participate in the 5th year of The Dartmouth Innovations Accelerator for Cancer (DIAC) at the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship. The team participated in the Kickoff Boot Camp on December 6 & 7 to develop a preliminary pitch presentation. Wisse can be seen giving the presentation in the image below.
Project Title: Detection of tumor precursor fields in squamous cell carcinoma using fluorescence guidance
Team Members: Wisse Haakma, Sanjana Pannem, Hang Nguyen, Laura Tafe, Kimberley Samkoe
November 20th, 2024
Our work in fluorescence guided surgery was featured in the 2024 Prouty Chronicle! Check out the article on pages 6-7.
October 15th, 2024
Captured us at the Northeast Symposium on Biomedical Optics (NESBO) 2024!
September 13rd, 2024
We are thrilled to announce that we have won the “2023 Image of the Year” at the World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC) 2024! This award recognizes the outstanding work and creativity of our lab, especially that of our alumnus, Dr. Cheng Wang, over the past year.
September 11th, 2024
We have two presenters at the World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC) 2024 today, Sanjana presenting Optimizing Paired Agent Imaging for clinical applications in Head and Neck Cancer and Veronica presenting Restained Frozen Sections for Registered Fluorescence and Histopathological Tumor Assessment.
August 30th, 2024
We have been awarded a grant from the Prouty Pilot with our project, namely “Large Animal Model for Squamous Cell Carcinomas of the Skin and Oral Cavity.”
August 19th, 2024
Welcome to our new program manager, Sarah McDonald! She joins us to oversee the new ARPA-H award and has a wealth of experience in research, cross-functional team leadership, early drug development, and grant writing and reporting. She returns to Dartmouth College after ten years in industry.
August 13th, 2024
We’re so excited to announce we are the recipient of an ARPA-H PSI award! This two year award (potential for seven years total) will investigate multi-modal optical imaging of critical normal structures at depth during laparoscopic surgery. We will be developing new surgical techniques with our collaborators on this award, including Dartmouth Health, Johns Hopkins University, Oregon Health and Science University, QUEL Imaging and Trace Biosciences. We have a new program manager joining us on August 19th to oversee this award and we will be hiring a total of three postdoctoral research associates to work in our labs at DH. Job postings can be found here and here.
June 3rd, 2024
Welcome to our new graduate student Wisse Haakma! Wisse is a student in the Dartmouth MCB, Cancer Biology program and Guarini Innovation PhD program. He previously worked as a Research Technician at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he worked on a head and neck cancer research project. He will continue this line of research at the Samkoe lab and will investigate possible detection methods of tumor precursor fields in head and neck cancers.