A team from Rutgers-New Brunswick University in New Jersey has invented an innovative method to detect and track cancerous tumors at an earlier stage than previously available technologies.
For the scientific community, it is a very important and promising advance in cancer research methodology and further proof that nanotechnology or the design of devices and molecules at microscopic scales is one of the great current assets of oncology .
The technique used by the Rutgers researchers relies on light-emitting nanoparticles to identify and track microtumors several months ahead of the capabilities of other conventional imaging technologies.
The team that designed it is optimistic about the possibilities of using them clinically in the near future. According to Prabhas V. Moghe, one of the study authors and a professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, “We have always dreamed of being able to track cancer progression in real time , and that is what we have achieved with our research. We have detected the disease in its most incipient state. “
Their study method, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering , is considered better and more effective than MRI and other imaging technologies in detecting small and early cancerous tumors. To achieve this, the Rutgers science team used mice with breast cancer injected with optical nanoprobes that emit short-wave light as they travel through the bloodstream.
According to Vidya Ganapathy, one of the study’s co-authors and a research professor in Rutgers’ department of biomedical engineering, ” Cancer cells can lodge in very diverse niches in the body and this optical device follows cells as they go wherever they go. This way the disease can be better treated, because you know where the tumor is going to spread . “
When compared to magnetic resonance imaging, optical nanoparticles were much more agile in detecting the expansion of microtumors in the adrenal glands and bones of mice, which could lead to several months ahead of treating them .
More effective than any other detection method
Other detection methods such as computerized topographies and biopsies can be effective, but they usually do not locate micrometastases or small clusters of cancer cells.
If future studies confirm the viability of this new nanoparticle technology, doctors will be able to diagnose and treat cancer at a stage where other detection systems are unable to locate the carcinogenic action until later.
And not only that: nanoparticles have the potential to identify more than 100 types of cancer , according to Professor Moghe. For Steven Libutti, director of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, “the Achilles heel of surgical treatment of cancer is the presence of micrometastases. But the nanoprobes described in this research have a great future when it comes to solving this problem.”
Obviously, the efficacy of this method has yet to be proven in human patients, but any improvement in cancer detection should be celebrated as it deserves. And it is that in the United States alone, it is expected that in 2017 there will be 1,688,780 new cases of cancer and 600,920 deaths from this disease .
According to Moghe, this nanoparticle technology could be available in five years , which is very encouraging.
References:
Harini Kantamneni, Margot Zevon. ‘Surveillance nanotechnology for multi-organ cancer metastases’. Nature Biomedical Engineering 1, 993–1003 (2017). doi: 10.1038 / s41551-017-0167-9
