Breast cancer is the most common cancer for women in the UK accounting for 30% of new cancer cases. Despite this, over 1 million women per year ignore NHS screening invitations for early detection of breast cancer at least in part due to the invasive and sometimes painful process of mammography.Prof Simona Francese came to TEDxManchester to discuss an unlikely but highly promising alternative to traditional cancer screening. The collection of fingerprints is already well-known as a classic tool of crime scene investigation, but Simona believes the humble fingerprint has enormous potential to become a new way to screen for breast cancer. The fingerprint screen would be cheaper and far less invasive and could become a powerful new tool in the vital early detection of cancers for millions of women.Simona Francese is Professor of Forensic and Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), UK. She is the Lead of the Sheffield Multi-Modal Imaging Centre and Head of the Centre for Mass Spectrometry Imaging at SHU. Simona is an expert in the development of MALDI MS Imaging applications and has pioneered its development for the analysis of latent fingermarks and blood to profile criminals. More recently she has engaged in research at the interface between forensics and clinical diagnostics using blood and sweat in fingertip smears to detect cancer and other pathologies. She has generated a combined total of 97 publications and has been awarded a total of ~£1.8m worth of research grants/contracts to date. Her research has been implemented in police casework in UK and Europe and has been partly funded by the Home Office, West Yorkshire Police and The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, UK. Simona regularly seeks to communicate her work to wider audience including a presentation at the main TED Conference in Vancouver in 2018 and at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 2023 on molecular fingerprinting.This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx