Early Detection of Colorectal Cancer Is About to Get Easier

UH researcher Zhengwei Li is developing a wearable biosensor for long-term health monitoring.

By Sam Eifling

The mortality for people with colorectal cancer is extremely high, making it the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in America. But Zhengwei Li, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston, has found a potentially groundbreaking way to catch the disease early.

The solution? A tiny sensor that alerts you when it detects the unusually stiff tissue of a tumor. Increasing evidence demonstrates biophysical signaling such as tissue stiffness can be used as a marker for colorectal cancer prognosis. The discovery has the potential to add novel anti-metastasis therapeutics to the current diagnostics arsenal.

The device he is developing would be wearable — perhaps a centimeter wide, effective when embedded in a piece of clothing or a watch and making long-term monitoring easy. A diagnosis might take about two minutes. It would remotely sense and measure the biophysical properties of tissues in the body, and then send data to a smartphone app that would alert you if it detected tissue with a stiffness consistent with a solid-state cancer (such as colorectal cancer, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, etc.).

This tiny sensor would alert you when it detects a tumor.

This tiny sensor would alert you when it detects a tumor.

“Colorectal cancer is a very deadly cancer, because when you find it, it’s already metastasized,” Li says. “Early detection is very important. I hope to make this device affordable, so every family can get access to this device quite cheap.”

Early detection is especially important for populations disproportionately affected by the disease. African Americans have a 20% higher likelihood of getting colorectal cancer and a 40% higher death rate — the highest incidence and mortality rates of all racial groups. Li’s study is being supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and by the Research Centers in Minority Institutions at UH’s HEALTH Center for Addictions Research and Cancer Prevention. Li says he hopes to have the monitoring system finished and on the market within a few years.