What happens when a visual artist goes to work at a cancer nanomedicine laboratory?

As an article in artnet News and MSK’s On Cancer blog reports, it can lead to a new medium. Working together, artist Joseph Cohen and MSK chemist Dr. Daniel Heller developed a paint containing carbon nanotubes, a material used by the lab in diagnostic tests. They are invisible to the human eye but light up when viewed with an infrared camera.

A painting by Joseph Cohen looks different photographed in regular light (left) and with a near-infrared camera (right) because of paint containing carbon nanotubes. Photo courtesy of Joseph Cohen.

Now they have applications in Mr. Cohen’s art. He has created and shown paintings that look different in visible and infrared light, displaying them in galleries and at science conferences. And Dr. Heller’s lab is using the paint to develop a new test for microalbuminuria, a urinary marker and early sign of several diseases, including some cancers.

See Dr. Heller’s laboratory in action: