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With cancer rates increasing and affecting more people every year, I felt it was important to educate the younger generation about the potential factors that could put them at risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis later in life. I thought that this was important to do because most students, especially

With cancer rates increasing and affecting more people every year, I felt it was important to educate the younger generation about the potential factors that could put them at risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis later in life. I thought that this was important to do because most students, especially in rural communities, are not taught the factors that increase your risk of getting cancer in the future. This leads to students not having the tools to think about the repercussions that their actions can have in their distant future in regard to their risk of getting cancer. I went to six schools throughout the valley and the White Mountains of Arizona with differing education levels and demographics to provide them with prevention strategies that they could implement into their daily lives to reduce their risk of getting cancer in the future. Some of the schools had curriculums that included cancer and some of the factors that increase your risk, while others never mention what is happening biologically when a person has cancer. I introduced factors such as no smoking or tobacco use, diet, exercise, sunscreen use, avoiding alcohol, and getting screened regularly. While at each school, I discussed the importance of creating these healthy habits while they are young because cancer is a disease that comes from the accumulation of mutations that can begin occurring in their bodies even now. After my presentation, 98.6% of the 305 students who viewed my presentation felt like they had learned something from the presentation and were almost all willing to implement at least one of the changes into their daily lives.
ContributorsGoforth, Michelle Nicole (Author) / Compton, Carolyn (Thesis director) / Lake, Douglas (Committee member) / Popova, Laura (Committee member) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Background: Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is an increasingly prevalent allergic disease characterized by eosinophilic inflammation and symptoms of esophageal dysfunction. Diagnosis and monitoring require repeated, invasive endoscopic esophageal biopsies to assess levels of eosinophilic inflammation. Recently, the minimally invasive esophageal string test (EST) has been used collect protein in mucosal secretions

Background: Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is an increasingly prevalent allergic disease characterized by eosinophilic inflammation and symptoms of esophageal dysfunction. Diagnosis and monitoring require repeated, invasive endoscopic esophageal biopsies to assess levels of eosinophilic inflammation. Recently, the minimally invasive esophageal string test (EST) has been used collect protein in mucosal secretions as a surrogate for tissue biopsies in monitoring disease activity. From the string, assessment of the eosinophil-associated proteins major basic protein-1 (MBP-1) and eotaxin-3 (Eot3) is used to assess disease activity; however, this requires measurement in a reference laboratory, for which the turnaround time for results exceeds the time required for histopathologic assessment of endoscopic biopsies. In addition, MBP-1 and Eot3 are not markers unique to eosinophils. These obstacles can be overcome by targeting eosinophil peroxidase (EPX), an eosinophil-specific protein, using a rapid point-of-care test. Currently, EPX is measured by a labor-intensive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), but we sought to optimize a rapid point-of-care test to measure EPX in EST segments. Methods: We extracted protein from residual EST segments and measured EPX levels by ELISA and a lateral flow assay (LFA). Results: EPX levels measured by LFA strongly correlated with those quantified by ELISA (rs = 0.90 {95% CI: 0.8283, 0.9466}). The EPX LFA is comparable to ELISA for measuring EPX levels in ESTs. Conclusions: The EPX LFA can provide a way to rapidly test EPX levels in ESTs in clinical settings and may serve as a valuable tool to facilitate diagnosis and monitoring of EoE.
ContributorsDao, Adelyn (Author) / Lake, Douglas (Thesis director) / Borges, Chad (Committee member) / Wright, Benjamin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2024-05
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Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most commonly transmitted STI and isresponsible for an estimated 5% of cancer cases worldwide. HPV infection is implicated in 70% of cervical cancer incidence and is also responsible for a variety of oropharyngeal and anogenital cancers. While vaccination has greatly reduced the cervical cancer burden in developed countries,

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most commonly transmitted STI and isresponsible for an estimated 5% of cancer cases worldwide. HPV infection is implicated in 70% of cervical cancer incidence and is also responsible for a variety of oropharyngeal and anogenital cancers. While vaccination has greatly reduced the cervical cancer burden in developed countries, HPV infection remains high in developing countries due to high cost and poor access to healthcare. Several studies have highlighted the presence of anti-HPV antibodies following infection and their potential use as biomarkers for developing novel screening methods. Progression from initial infection to cancer is slow, thus presenting an opportunity for effective screening programs. Biomarker screening is an important area of cancer detection and Lateral Flow Assays (LFA) are a low cost, easy to use alternative to other screening methods that require extensive training and laboratory space. Therefore, this project proposes as a hypothesis that the development of an LFA screening for HPV specific IgG can provide clinically relevant data for the early detection of cervical dysplasia. This project adapts an LFA in a multiplexed format for fluorescence-based serologic detection of HPV specific IgG in patient plasma.
ContributorsJohns, William (Author) / Anderson, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Lake, Douglas (Committee member) / Hogue, Brenda (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023