Langjian Dong and Daan Roos Win the Rudolf Agricola Interdisciplinary Collaboration Award

Langjian Dong, PhD candidate at the Zernike Institute under supervision of Professor Pieter van der Zaag, together with Daan Roos, PhD candidate at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) under the supervision of Professor Max Witjes (Professor of Maxillofacial Oncology), has won the 2025 Rudolf Agricola Interdisciplinary Collaboration Award. This prize, awarded by the Rudolf Agricola School for Sustainable Development at the University of Groningen, comes with a €2,000 grant.

With this funding, they aim to further develop their idea to support surgeons in a sustainable way during the assessment of surgical margins in real time. Oncological resections in cases of oral cavity cancer are particularly challenging, as they require precise removal of the tumor along with a 5 mm margin of healthy tissue in a delicate area. At the UMCG, extensive research is being conducted to support this process using (molecular) fluorescence imaging.

Making the resection margins transparent could enhance the effectiveness of fluorescence imaging—a concept currently being explored at the Zernike Institute. Existing methods rely on optical imaging techniques that use chemicals which are not environmentally friendly.

In September 2024, a study published in the leading journal Science (Z. Ou et al., Science 385, 1061 (2024)) showed that tissue in mice could be made transparent using tartrazine, a dye commonly used in the food industry. Daan and Langjian now want to investigate whether this approach can be applied to human tissue. If successful, this could make the process more sustainable and potentially highly suitable for oncological resections in the head and neck region.