Amos Danielli, PhD

About the Investigator

Prof. Amos Danielli is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University, where he leads the Optical Imaging and Biosensing Laboratory and heads the Bioengineering Track. He specializes in developing simple, rapid, and extremely sensitive diagnostic technologies that can detect tiny amounts of biological material in blood or saliva. His lab has pioneered several innovative methods that improve the detection of cancer-related molecules by more than 100-fold compared with current clinical tools.

About the Research

Doctors today can take a “liquid biopsy,” a small sample of blood or saliva, to look for molecules released by cancer cells. These molecules can reveal early signs of cancer or help monitor whether treatments are working. Unfortunately, many of these molecules are present at extremely low levels, especially in early-stage disease. Because current tests are not sensitive enough, cancers may go undetected until they have progressed. Prof. Danielli’s team has invented a new method called concentration-enhanced PCR (cePCR). It uses the same basic chemistry found in standard hospital PCR tests but adds a unique step: instead of trying to detect cancer signals buried in background “noise,” the method physically gathers and concentrates the signals before measuring them. This dramatically improves sensitivity, in many cases by more than 100-fold, and allows detection of cancer-related molecules that current methods miss. The project will refine this technology and test it on liquid-biopsy samples from patients with head-and-neck cancer and brain tumors. If successful, this work may enable doctors to detect cancer earlier, choose treatments more accurately, and monitor patients using a simple blood or saliva test, ultimately improving outcomes for patients and families.