Washington
: In what may pave the way for personalized treatment for cancer
patients, scientists claim to have developed a blood test,
Which can detect even a single tumour cell that can cause the disease.`
A team in Boston, which has developed it, says studies using the experimental test will start this year, with support from global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, before it is marketed worldwide. According to the scientists, the test could detect many types of cancer, mainly breast, prostate, colon and lung. ‘this is like a liquid biopsy that avoids painful tissue sampling and a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans,” the media quoted Daniel Haber, the chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s cancer centre and one of the test’s inventor’s as saying.
Scientists said the blood test uses a microchip that resembles a laboratory slide covered in 78,000 tiny posts; like bristles on hairbrush, coated with antibodies that bind to tumour cells. When blood is forced across the chip, cells ping of the posts like balls in a pinball machine. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can count and capture them study, say the scientists. “The test can find one cancer one cancer cell in a billion or more healthy cells,” said Mehmet Toner, a Harvard University bioengineer, who helped design it.
The technology is known as Circulating Tumor Cell microchip. The findings have been published in the latest edition of the ‘Nature’ journal.
The partnership brings together Veridex, which is the only company to have brought a version of the test to the US market, with clinical researchers to develop an improved version of the current technology. “This is collaboration is an opportunity to apply our past learning to the advancement of a platform that will ultimately benefit patients with cancer,”
said Toner.
The planned “next-generation system” aims to improve the sensitivity of the current test and make it available for use by oncologists “as a diagnostic tool for personalizing patient care, as well as by researchers to accelerate and improve the process of drug discovery and development”, Veridex said.
[The Times of India, Kolkata, Tuesday, January 4, 2011]
Which can detect even a single tumour cell that can cause the disease.`
A team in Boston, which has developed it, says studies using the experimental test will start this year, with support from global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, before it is marketed worldwide. According to the scientists, the test could detect many types of cancer, mainly breast, prostate, colon and lung. ‘this is like a liquid biopsy that avoids painful tissue sampling and a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans,” the media quoted Daniel Haber, the chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s cancer centre and one of the test’s inventor’s as saying.
Scientists said the blood test uses a microchip that resembles a laboratory slide covered in 78,000 tiny posts; like bristles on hairbrush, coated with antibodies that bind to tumour cells. When blood is forced across the chip, cells ping of the posts like balls in a pinball machine. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can count and capture them study, say the scientists. “The test can find one cancer one cancer cell in a billion or more healthy cells,” said Mehmet Toner, a Harvard University bioengineer, who helped design it.
The technology is known as Circulating Tumor Cell microchip. The findings have been published in the latest edition of the ‘Nature’ journal.
The partnership brings together Veridex, which is the only company to have brought a version of the test to the US market, with clinical researchers to develop an improved version of the current technology. “This is collaboration is an opportunity to apply our past learning to the advancement of a platform that will ultimately benefit patients with cancer,”
said Toner.
The planned “next-generation system” aims to improve the sensitivity of the current test and make it available for use by oncologists “as a diagnostic tool for personalizing patient care, as well as by researchers to accelerate and improve the process of drug discovery and development”, Veridex said.
[The Times of India, Kolkata, Tuesday, January 4, 2011]
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