High-sensitivity cancer cell detector developed in the United States

U.Sresearchers said recentlythey have developed a highly sensitive cancer cell detector, a technology that may eventually help diagnose cancerThe team, from the Massachusetts GeneralHospitaland Harvard Medical School, said they madeinstrumentsusing a card-sized chipinstrument is coated with antibodies on the tiny terminals on theto identify cancer cellsWhen the blood flows through the chip, the terminals stick to the cancer cells like glue, ignoring the blood cellsThe device is able to isolate,statistics and analyze freetumorcells in blood samplesThe old method was to find one to five cancer cells in 60 billion cells in 8 milliliters of blood, while the new device was able to find 1,000 cancer cells This blood-borne free tumor cells are the smallest components of the tumor Doctors already know a little about free tumor cells, but because they are small and fragile, it has been difficult to isolate and study them effectively "What we're doing with this technology is increasing the sensitivity of the chip many times, making it a tool that can be used clinically," said Mohammad Toner, a member of the development team researchers tested the chip with blood samples from 68 cancer patients with five types of cancer, , prostate cancer
, breast cancer , pancreatic cancer , and rectal cancer They found free tumor cells in 115 of 116 patient blood samples Free tumor cells were found in blood samples from healthy The sensitivity of this instrument is high , enough to detect changes in the level of free tumor cells during treatment If the level of free tumor cells detected drops , the tumors shown on the standard CT scanner will decrease accordingly the technology allows doctors to develop more targeted treatment sourcing , "understand how patients respond to treatment," Toner said
Their study was published in the British journal Nature