Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Quyen Nguyen, CEO and Founder of Alume Biosciences, is developing fluorescent-guided precision surgery technologies that enable surgeons to visualize critical structures, such as nerves, blood vessels, and tumor margins, more clearly during procedures. Alume is developing fluorescent dyes and imaging systems to support this approach, building on work by Roger Tsien who won the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. This technology has the potential to enable more complex surgical procedures to be performed safely in brain, head, neck, and abdominal surgeries and has the promise to transform surgery. Quyen elaborates, "I first met Roger Tsien Nobel Laureate for his work in fluorescence, in 2001. I had worked with green fluorescent protein, one of the things that he was working on for fluorescence, and he ultimately was awarded the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. And I asked him, ‘Roger, is there a way we can make nerves fluorescent in patients? We certainly have that in research, but surgeons don't have this tool now