ZEISS recently partnered with Cureus to host a publishing competition focused on microscope-integrated intraoperative fluorescence. The competition attracted articles submitted from all over the world, with the final field of published articles standing at 10. While prizes have already been awarded, we wanted to take some time to recognize a few of the highest-scoring articles.

The articles featured today finished the competition in 1st and 2nd place, respectively.

With a final SIQ score of 7.5, the winner of the Grand Prize for Scientific Acclaim, A Bioengineered Peptide that Localizes to and Illuminates Medulloblastoma: A New Tool with Potential for Fluorescence-Guided Surgical Resection was submitted by Shelley Ackerman, Christy Wilson, Suzana Kahn, James Kintzing, Darren Jindal, Samuel Cheshier, Gerald Grant & Jennifer Cochran.

Cureus Co-Editor-in-Chief Dr. Alexander Muacevic had this to say about the winning article, “It’s all about finding ways to better illuminate brain tumors for complete tumor resection – something I feel this article certainly accomplished.”

The 2nd place article, recieving an SIQ score of 7.0, was Fluorescence-Guided Tumor Visualization Using the Tumor Paint BLZ-100, and was submitted by David Kittle, Adam Mamelak, Julia Parrish-Novak, Stacey Hansen, Rameshwar Patil, Pallavi Gangalum, Julia Ljubimova, Keith Black and Pramod Butte.

Dr. Muacevic, again with his thoughts: “This is an interesting new innovation and I congratulate the authors for their work. They developed an imaging system for in-vivo imaging of the tumor ligand BLZ-100 for use in surgical resections of gliomas. Next step is to prove the clinical application. Ultimately the question remains if a clinical benefit in terms of prolonged survival can be demonstrated using this new innovation.”

Meanwhile, Cureus Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief, Dr. John Adler chipped in with his reaction: “Both of these gorgeous articles are examples of cutting edge science which will enable futuristic intraoperative fluorescence techniques to do ever better tumor resections.”

We’re thrilled that these excellent articles were submitted and published as part of the competition and we’re looking forward to publishing many more as our competitions continue! Stay tuned for a look at the 3rd place article!