Biopsy Goodbye? Not exactly. But it could be a good help in diagnosing and consequently treating the tumors. It is a new device which, through a simple blood sample, is able to detect cancer cells. It was proposed by a team of researchers from the University of Technology in Sydney, according to which the new technology would not only allow doctors to avoid invasive surgery, such as biopsybut would allow them to monitor the progress of therapies on patients suffering from cancer. Lo studio has just been published on the pages of the peer-reviewed journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
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Cancer diagnosis
To confirm a diagnosis of tumours, particularly in organs such as the liver, colon, kidneys and ovaries, it is very often necessary to resort to an invasive surgery, the biopsy in fact, a procedure which consists in taking a fragment of tissue or cells from a suspected tumor area to ascertain nature, and which can cause great discomfort to patients and increase the risk of complications due to surgery. However, one diagnosis definitive of cancer it is essential for the choice to be made treatment that it is as effective as possible. “Managing cancer by evaluating cancer cells in blood samples is much less invasive than taking tissue biopsies. It allows doctors to retest and monitor patient response to treatment,” said Majid Warkiani, co-author of the study.
liquid biopsy
In fact, there is also the so-called liquid biopsy, a minimally invasive procedure that allows you to carry out analyzes on material of tumor origin obtained from a body fluid, generally blood. As they explain by the Italian Medical Oncology Association (Aiom), however, the term often generates misunderstandings: “the liquid biopsy does not allow for a cancer diagnosis to be made: the cancer diagnosis is made on the tumor tissue”, explain the experts. “It can instead be used for the identification of markers prognostic or predictive”. Furthermore, current technologies for the liquid biopsythe researchers of the new study clarify, require a lot of time, are expensive and rely on specialized operators, thus limiting their application in the clinical setting.
The new device
The new device, called Static Droplet Microfluidicwas therefore designed as an integration into research and clinical laboratories, to provide an aid to doctors in diagnosis and in the monitoring of the health of cancer patients in a more practical and economical way. In fact, the technology is able to detect the cancer cells blood cells that have broken away from a primary tumor and entered the bloodstream. In particular, it uses a metabolic signature unique to cancer to differentiate cancer cells from healthy ones. “In the 1920s, Otto Warburg discovered that cancer cells consume a lot of glucose and therefore produce more lactate,” recalls Warkiani. “Our device monitors individual cells for lactate elevation using pH-sensitive fluorescent dyes that detect acidification around cells.”
Once the tumor cells are identified with the device they can be subjected to genetic and molecular analyses, thus aiding in the diagnosis and classification of the cancerand provide plans of treatment customized. As the researchers, who plan to commercialize their device shortly, point out, circulating tumor cells are also precursors of metastasisresponsible for the 90% of cancer deaths, and their study will allow us to improve our understanding of their biology, and, consequently, to direct us towards the development of new potential treatments.
Via: Wired.it
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