Norris Cotton Cancer Center has received a generous donation of $5,000 from the New Hampshire Prostate Cancer Coalition (NHPCC) to help support a unique, collaborative research project designed to help clinicians distinguish between men who need to be treated for prostate cancer and those who do not.

The donation is the first and largest research gift by any state prostate cancer coalition in the U.S., said Steve Ladew, president of the NH organization. The gift comprised 25% of NHPCC's assets.

"Our mission is to help reduce the number of New Hampshire men dying of prostate cancer. A major problem is that the medical community is unable to differentiate between prostate cancers that will kill a man and cancers that will never harm him," said Ladew. "We hope our gift to this program will encourage others to also give."

Prostate Cancer and Bioimpedance

The grant will help fund a collaborative research project, being conducted by Ryan Halter, PhD, of Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering and the Cancer Center that uses electrical bioimpedance to distinguish dangerous prostate cancers from those that pose little threat to a man's health. According to Dr. Halter, "Electrical bioimpedance measurements of tissue provide significant levels of contrast between benign and malignant pathologies due to the vastly different morphologies occurring between tissue types. Focal sensing or mapping of these properties can provide clinicians useful information regarding the extent and severity of diseases like cancer."