Would you know if you have cancer? There may soon be an app for that. Cancer researchers have developed a small device that, using a smart phone could allow physicians to know within 60 minutes if a suspicious mass in a patient is cancerous or benign.
Instead of immediately cutting the masses they suspect are tumors, oncologists often use a large needle to remove a few cells from a piece for analysis at a laboratory of pathology. But the tests used there, such as the examination of cell shape and coloring for various proteins, are sometimes inconclusive. Laboratory tests also several days.
Alternatively, the physician-researcher Ralph Weissleder team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston has developed a miniature version of a nuclear magnetic resonance of the workhorse tool (NMR) machine that allows researchers to identify chemical compounds by the way their nuclei react in magnetic fields. The researchers also found a way to attach magnetic nanoparticles with proteins so that the machine can take these specific proteins from a Gemisch chemicals, such as those found in a sample of tumor cells. NMR machine with a standard laboratory chemistry is approaching the size of a filing cabinet, but the new device is only about as big as a cup of coffee.
To see how this could be used in the cancer clinic, MGH researchers used the standard needle procedure to collect suspicious cells from the abdomen of patients. They were then labeled cells with different magnetic nanoparticles for binding to known cancer-associated proteins and injected cells in their miniature NMR machine. The device, which data can be read with a smartphone application in place of a computer, detected levels of nine protein markers for cancer cells.
biopsies Combining the results for four of these proteins, the MGH team diagnosed accurately for 48 of the 50 patients in less than an hour per patient. The micro-NMR diagnosis was correct 100% of the time in another series of 20 patients, the MGH team reports today in Science Translational Medicine . In contrast, standard pathology tests on similar samples were correct only 74% to 84% of the time.
Weissleder hoped the device would allow a doctor to test a biopsy sample needle just minutes from the collection and tell the patient the results as soon as he or she wakes up from the procedure. Currently, patients come for a biopsy, go home, and wait several days for the results. "Our patients hate this week not know if they have cancer," he said. The strategy should also reduce repeat biopsies, which typically cost thousands of dollars, he said.
Eventually, researchers hope to use their mini-NMR apparatus to monitor the cancer and whether patients respond to drugs by detecting the levels of specific proteins in blood samples.
tumor immunologist John Greenman of the University of Hull in the UK, which also works on devices called lab-on-a-chip, called "extremely interesting" study as an early example of this technology. What is essential, he said, is that the MGH group compared his test with standard tests, which "is essential to obtain the support of the medical community." Such devices may have many applications beyond cancer, such as environmental monitoring and detection of biological weapons, he said.
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