POTSDAM -- A team of researchers at Clarkson University won the 2015 Journal of Laboratory Automation (JALA) Authors Choice Award for a paper on cancer cells.

Clarkson doctoral candidate Armand Gatien Ngounou Wetie said the project, led by Clarkson Trustee Bayard D. Clarkson Sr. of Sloan-Kettering Institute, aims to identify diffusible factors in high-density cancer cells that cause them to make other low-density cells grow. The research was conducted on lymphoma cells.

The Authors Choice Award recognizes the paper for its popularity among authors' citations in 2014.

"We are trying to find diffusible factors that were most likely secreted by cancer cells and were supposed to be acting as a growth factor on other cells," Ngounou said.

The researchers published the paper "Automated Mass Spectrometry-Based Functional Assay for the Routine Analysis of the Secretome" in 2013.

“This research is important for our understanding of how cancer spreads," said Clarkson. “I’m pleased that this award recognizes the hard work performed by the research teams at Sloan-Kettering and Clarkson, and that this paper has been useful to other scientists.”

Ngounou, Clarkson, student Izabela Sokolowska, Research Assistant Professor Alisa G. Woods, doctoral candidate Kelly L. Wormwood, Sloan-Kettering research associate Su Dao, doctoral candidate Sapan Patel, and Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biomolecular Science Costel C. Darie are listed as authors of the paper.

"It's good to see something that's been written by us be deemed valuable by other scientists," Ngounou said.

Read the article at www.slas.org/publications/scientific-journals/2015-slas-journal-achievement-awards/.