Last August the National Science Foundation chose UC Davis to spearhead one of six new science and technology centers around the country. The six centers were selected from among 143 applicants nationwide, bringing the total number of centers to 25. UC Davis heads the only one devoted to biophotonics.

Biophotonics, the study of light in biology and medicine, is an emerging field that encompasses radiant energy across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves through optical wavelengths to gamma rays. Potential applications are dazzling: light-based tools that can detect and treat cancer, laser microscopes that can see inside working cells, even personal anthrax detectors.

The Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology at UC Davis will take shape at the corner of Stockton Boulevard and Second Avenue, a weedy lot where a Moose Lodge stood for more than four decades. The 40,000-square-foot building, expected to open its doors next fall, will provide badly needed laboratory space for new cancer center researchers. The cancer research program is fast outgrowing its current research facility, a 50,000-square-foot brick tower known as Research III.

"Not only will the new space allow us to move ahead with faculty recruitment in cancer research, but it also offers us a chance to integrate some cancer research with biophotonics research," says Hsing-Jien Kung, director of basic sciences for UC Davis Cancer Center.

Physicist Dennis Matthews and neurosurgeon James Boggan are co-directors of the new center. Matthews is associate director of the UC Davis Cancer Center Biomedical Technology Program and leader of the Biomedical Technology Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Boggan is professor and vice chair of neurological surgery at UC Davis.

As headquarters for the pioneering new center, UC Davis coordinates the efforts of nine member institutions: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCSF, Stanford University, Mills College, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Fisk University in Tennessee, Hampton University in Virginia and Alabama A&M University. The center unites more than 100 researchers at the member institutions in a collaborative effort to speed new technology to the clinic.

"Bringing people from different disciplines and institutions together to tackle a problem brings new expertise and approaches to bear," Boggan says. "Otherwise, cross-disciplinary work just doesn't tend to occur; it isn't encouraged in the usual structure. When you have a grant like this, people come together."

The award comes with $40 million from the National Science Foundation over 10 years. Another $12 million has come from federal, state and private partners.

The National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the United States government, was created in 1950 and charged with "promoting the progress of science, advancing national health, prosperity and welfare and securing the national defense."

The foundation established its Science and Technology Centers program in 1987. The goal, in response to rising global competition, was to mount an innovative, interdisciplinary attack in important areas of basic research. The first centers were established in 1989, more were added in 1991, and in a few short years they have grown from a new idea into a vital network of programs. Centers have been created in five broad areas: the biological sciences, computer and information sciences and engineering, the geosciences, mathematics and physical sciences and the social, behavioral and economic sciences.

Researchers in the new building will shed new light on cancer. One approach relies on fluorescent tags to pinpoint a molecule's location. "We're trying to perfect this to the point that we can run tests for proteins associated with cancer," Matthews says. "We want to be able to detect a protein in a patient's saliva, urine or blood that's a marker of cancer somewhere in the body or of a predisposition to cancer." UC Davis researchers will also work closely with their colleagues at the nine allied institutions. At Stanford, for example, investigators are building an X-ray-free electron laser. The laser, which may be completed as early as three years from now, may give scientists their first look at a working molecule, in its native state, inside a living cell. Matthews plans to be first in line to use the laser to answer basic questions about the molecular mechanisms that turn healthy cells malignant.

Livermore physicist Stavros Demos will move his work on an optical biopsy prototype to the new biophotonics building. His prototype detects cancer by analyzing laser light reflected from tissue. Demos has shown that light bounces off malignant cells differently than off healthy cells, and has designed technology that can tell the difference.

He is applying the technology first to bladder cancer. His prototype fits on the tip of a cystoscope, a device used to look inside the bladder. He hopes the technology will enable urologists to diagnose bladder tumors during cystoscopy, without need for a surgical biopsy or pathology report. Urologists use a cysto scope, a lighted instrument attached to the tip of a thin, flexible tube, to look inside patients' bladders noninvasively. The flexible tube reaches the bladder through the urethra.

"For bladder cancer, we now have a well-defined design that has proved very accurate," says Demos, who also serves as associate professor of urology at UC Davis. "In preliminary tests using human bladder tissue extracted following surgery, there has been 100-percent agreement with the pathologists' diagnoses.

" The prototype must now be refined for use in the clinic, and Demos and his colleagues are seeking funding from the National Cancer Institute to build it.

"Maybe in a couple of years," he says, "we can be doing this in the human body."