Obsidio Inc., a medical device company based in Columbia, South Carolina, has developed an embolic hydrogel (called a gel embolic material: GEM) designed to be delivered minimally invasively through a clinical catheter for blood vessel occlusion. Applications include controlling blood flow in vascular injuries and aneurysms, reducing tumor blood su (Read more...)
Tag: Oncology
Gold Nanoclusters Power a Simple Cancer Urine Test
Researchers at Imperial College London and MIT have developed a simple cancer urine test based on injected gold nano-clusters which enter the urine only in the presence of cancer. So far, the researchers have used the test to detect colon cancer in mice. A positive result is indicated through a simple color change, meaning that […]
Handheld MasSpec Pen for Molecular Cancer Detection During Surgeries
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have developed a new handheld pen for rapid intraoperative cancer detection. Their work demonstrates that the tool can identify different molecular profiles between cancerous and non-cancerous tissue without harming the sampled tissues. This exciting development can one day improve cancer diagnosis (Read more...)
CRISPR-Responsive Materials Deliver Therapy on Biological Cues
CRISPR gene editing is a technique famous for its potential to edit the genomes of living organisms, including humans. Using the technique, it may be possible to reverse congenital conditions, kill off viruses, and do things previously only imagined. But now it has been employed to do something else entirely, and that is to give […]
Plugging Holes in Blood Vessels Caused by Nanoparticle Therapy
While targeting nanoparticles to attack cancer cells can be effective at reducing primary tumors, they tend to create tiny holes within blood vessel walls that let some cancer cells escape and metastasize elsewhere. This is a serious side effect that may limit the usefulness of many nanoparticle-based cancer therapies in the long run, so researcher (Read more...)
Cold Plasma to be Tested as Killer of Cancer Cells
Cold plasma is an unusual gaseous substance in which only the electrons are heated to thousands of degrees, with the rest of the material remaining at room temperature. Purdue University researchers have advanced this field and have helped to make it ready for clinical applications, since cold plasma has the ability to kill target cells […]
DigniCap Delta Hair Loss Prevention System for Chemo Now in U.S.
Dignitana, a company out of Lund, Sweden, won FDA clearance and is now distributing its DigniCap Delta scalp cooling system in the U.S. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will be the first recipient in America of the fourth generation system that’s designed to prevent hair loss in patients undergoing chemotherapy to fight soli (Read more...)
Nexus Ultrasonic Surgical Platform from Misonix Cleared in Europe
Mixonix, a Farmingdale, New York company that focuses on ultrasonic devices for surgical applications, including osteotomies and debridements, landed European CE Mark approval for its Nexus surgical platform. The system was FDA cleared earlier this year. The Nexus combines the capabilities of Mixonix’s three existing products, namely BoneScal (Read more...)
Electromagnetic Fields to Stop Spread of Cancer
After a cancer is discovered in a patient, the biggest fear is that it will metastasize to other parts of the body. Currently, there’s really nothing that doctors can do to alter a cancer’s ability to shed tumor cells that can easily travel far away from their birth site. Now, researchers at Ohio State University […]
Device Speeds Cervical Cancer Screening
When screening for cervical cancer, immunofluorescence staining is used to identify the presence of proteins that are biomarkers for the disease. It is a slow and meticulous process that requires lab technicians to prepare individual cells for analysis. Even then, since not all cells show the same disease characteristics, the rate of false negative (Read more...)
Chip Captures Circulating Tumor Cells, Keeps Them Alive
Cancer metastasis continues to pose difficulties for clinicians. Tumors shed cells which travel throughout the body and attach themselves at distant sites, causing new tumors to sprout. These so-called circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are extremely rare and difficult to pick out from whole blood, in part because they’re often a similar size to (Read more...)
Computational Simulations to Guide Cancer Therapy
Researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago have developed a new supercomputer-based tool to model tumor progression and destruction by the immune system. Their work demonstrates that computational simulations of immune-tumor interactions can infer whether or not a given tumor can be destroyed with immunotherapy. This exc (Read more...)
Self-Powered Microrobots Deliver Drugs to Tumors in the Gut
Treating tumors within the GI system is often a difficult challenge, frequently requiring invasive surgery. Scientists at Caltech have now developed self-propelled microrobots that can deliver drugs to precise spots within the intestines, and that can let clinicians monitor and control their activity. Besides drug delivery, the microrobots have the (Read more...)
New Infrared Chemical Imaging Method to Diagnose Cancers
Prostate cancer can be very difficult to diagnose, with way too many patients undergoing surgeries that turn out to be unnecessary. Now, researchers at Purdue University, Boston University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an infrared chemical imaging technique that may improve diagnostic studies and in the process cut down on exc (Read more...)
New Biomaterial Improves Brain Cancer Survival in Rats
Researchers from the University of Nottingham have developed a new biomaterial that delivers chemotherapies to treat brain cancer. Their work demonstrates that their biodegradable paste led to increased survival compared to controls, and that half of all rats in a study were clear of any cancer as confirmed by laboratory tests. This exciting develo (Read more...)
Thin Microgels Encapsulate and Protect Therapeutic Cells
Cell-based therapies, such as those involving the delivery of stem cells, require a way to encapsulate cells inside a protective package in order for them to not be destroyed and washed out by the body. There have been successful attempts to contain therapeutic cells within hydrogels, but the resulting materials were bulky and could not […]
Chemo Tester Identifies Which Formulation Works for Each Patient
Chemotherapy is challenging for patients, as it can be terribly brutal on their bodies, but also for physicians trying to figure out which medication to deliver. Now, a new device has been developed at Rutgers University that can test whether a given chemo agent works on a patient’s specific tumor. The idea is that a […]
New Nanoparticles to Stop Growth of HER2-Positive Breast Cancer
HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) is a protein that is associated with some particularly aggressive forms of breast cancer. The presence of high concentrations of this protein seems to lead to the growth of tumors, so inactivating HER2 may help to stop the spread of certain strains of cancer in the body. An […]
(Read more...)Harmonic Nanoparticles for Theranostic Applications
Researchers from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have developed new nanoparticles for theranostic (therapeutic and diagnostic) applications. Their work describes the synthesis of these particles and demonstrates that by stimulating at a long, safe wavelength, the nanoparticles can cleave bonds that hold onto dr (Read more...)
Carbon Dioxide-Based Cancer Cryoablation Probe for Low-Resource Regions
Undergraduate researchers at John Hopkins University have developed a cryoablation probe for breast cancer, which uses carbon dioxide instead of argon, making it more affordable and accessible for use in low resource regions. Treatments for women with breast cancer are scarce in poorer places. In fact, survival rates can be as low as 12% [&h (Read more...)