STRANDS FOR CANCER
Your hair holds the key to saving lives through early cancer detection
Your donation of 1/2 inch of hair can significantly impact a research effort for a groundbreaking, new early cancer detection method.
How it works:
Take the quiz - see if you qualify to donate.
If you qualify, you’ll be mailed a FREE kit to collect your hair.
You drop your kit in the mail, and the lab receives it 3-5 days later.
your privacy is protected.
Once your donation of hair is sent to the lab, we anonymize the source. Your data will never be tied to you.
No DNA or genetic information is collected.
About the project: A novel method to detect cancer
Dr. Ken Pienta, in partnership with Dr. Emma Hammarlund, Dr. Kazi Uddin, and Dr. Per Malmberg may have preliminarily demonstrated that it may be possible to detect cancer using a person’s hair.
Cancer is incredibly metabolically active, and early diagnosis via the tools and procedures that are readily available today can present challenges to diagnosing cancer before it spreads. The standard diagnostic procedure for most types of cancers involves a patient undergoing a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, which is expensive, time- consuming, and has a margin of error that is concerning. Imagine if there was an inexpensive, non-invasive, and precise diagnostic tool to detect cancer before it spreads based on increased metabolism. The team has discovered a method to detect cancers by testing hair. The hair provides a reflection of the hidden cancer.
The team is in the process of collecting hair samples from men and women with cancer as well as controls to analyze the hair samples' to prove definitively that the new test works.
We’re a team of chemists, cancer doctors, and data scientists pioneering a new way to fight cancer. But we can’t do it alone - WE NEED YOUR HELP AND WE NEED YOUR HAIR!
The team
Backed by science. Driven by you
Per Malmberg, PhD
Mass spectrometry, Chalmers University of Technology
Julhash Kazi, PhD
Machine learning and bioinformatics, Lund University
Kenneth Pienta, MD
Cancer biologist and medical oncologist, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Emma Hammarlund, PhD
Geochemist and geobiologist, Lund University