With novel microfluidic chip, tumor cells can get directly from the blood of a patient.
Researchers at the Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) working on a finger-sized plastic chip, with which it is possible to separate small amounts of cancer cells from a blood sample. These so-called circulating tumor cells could then be examined for genetic characteristics to determine which drug to address them. Continued examination of the blood with the chip would allow physicians to monitor in quasi-real time whether the drug reaches.
observers believe that the market for such cancer therapies in the coming years could be worth billions. Dozens of companies are working on such a microfluidic chip, whose microscopic channels allow it to sort cells. However, only a finished device, sold by a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Medical Group, with approval from the U.S. health supervision has been blessed. The current technology is also unable to detect circulating tumor cells when they are only in very small numbers in the blood, says Daniel Haber, director of the MGH Cancer Center, who developed the detector. His method is to also cover almost all types of tumors that do not work with the hardware of Johnson & Johnson. Haber and his team at MGH work with the biomedical engineer Mehmet Toner together from the latest prototype chip a commercial product to make. The new design should be able to pull any type of cancer cells from the blood and as long as they kept alive until pathologists have performed genetic testing. The result of these studies is valuable because the pharmaceutical companies increasingly develop cancer drugs with specific molecular attachment points. These targeted therapies to improve cancer treatment. The specialist company Foundation Medicine says that more than 70 percent of the tumors they analyzed carry genetic signatures which can be used for therapy. science and medicine have long known that cancer through the bloodstream disseminated. Methods to capture circulating tumor cells, it was not. “These are very rare cells, swimming ! amidst the other 100 billion,” said Toner. “Microfluidic gave us the chance to manipulate the blood precise and to see if this tumor material is available in a usable amount.” A portion of the circulating tumor cells can, my researcher, induce metastasis. “In the end there is a subpopulation of these cells, which kills the patient,” says Toner. The discovery of this material in real time and have potentially large impact on the early detection. The technology also allows doctors to monitor the progression of cancer. “Currently, patients who were once diagnosed, usually do not undergo re-biopsy,” says Haber. Cancer grows and spreads in the body, it’ll regularly changes: “We can not assume that the initially observed anomalies remain the same.” Partner uses its already microfluidic experiments to define genetic mutations in lung tumors and also then adjust the therapy. Johnson & Johnson is working with the MGH together to bring Haber’s technology to market. “In cancer treatment, the trend is towards the possibility of molecular changes in disease observed over a longer period of time,” says Nicholas Draco Poli, head of oncology biomarkers in the J & J pharmaceutical subsidiary Janssen. The MGH device and some other chips in development isolate rare cancer cells in which they sort out the billions of existing red and white blood cells. Each cancer cell is then kept in a nutrient solution, from which it can then be pulled out and examined individually. Other variants of the technique, as well as the currently sold by Johnson & Johnson unit, the cells based on their access physical surface via antibody coatings in microfluidic channels that are tuned to specific proteins on the cell surface. But it does not work in all tumors. In addition to improving cancer treatment could devices that capture tumor cells, also serve the research. At present, for example, still not known exactly how can! cer sprea! ds in the body. “The question, as it tends to spread quickly, was never conclusively answered because we had no tools for it,” says Haber. With the new technology tumors are now “on the move” trackable. <- Googleoff: all ->
