A team of researchers in Ireland has collaborated on developing a new fluorescent molecular probe that can hone in on and light up cancer in an exciting new way. The technology will hopefully have important consequences for cancer resection surgeries, allowing physicians to remove tumors while sparing healthy tissues. Previously developed fluorescent molecular probes are […]
Tag: Oncology
Floating Flexible Sensor to Monitor Engineered Tissues and Cell Cultures
Tissue engineering is a vibrant research field poised to revolutionize how we heal organs and tissues following damage from injury and disease. One of the difficulties that scientists working with cultured cells discover is the inability to closely monitor a number of characteristics of their cellular cultures. One reason is that water and electronics don’t […]
DNA Microscopy Visualizes Genetic Content of Tissue Samples
Fundamentally new microscopy techniques don’t come out very often, but scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have just unveiled a new method of “imaging” tissue samples that provides a complex genetic and biomolecular picture of what’s going on inside individual cells. “It’s an entirely new category of microscopy,” explained Aviv Regev, one of the […]
Ultrasound and Microbubbles Used to Penetrate the Blood-Brain Barrier
While the blood-brain barrier (BBB) protects the brain from infections, it also makes it difficult to get drugs that treat neurological conditions to where they’re needed. Now, researchers at Columbia University have shown that their ultrasound technique can open up the BBB and allow for the delivery of therapeutic proteins and genes into the brain. […]
Magnetic Nanoclusters For Tumor Destruction
A wide variety of magnetic nanoparticles have been developed by researchers. These devices can be injected into tumors and, using a magnetic field, made to heat up and kill cancer cells. One major challenge with using such nanoparticles is that they are usually expected to be injected using a syringe directly into a tumor, but […]
Method Makes PET Tracers out of Common Biomolecules
Researchers from the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed new radioactive tracers to track pharmaceuticals in the body and to image cancer. The findings, reported in journal Science, describe the new chemistry they have developed, along with data that demonstrate that the team was able to radioactively tag compounds that have […]
Tumors Grown in 3D from Cancer Patient Samples for Drug Screening
Cancerous tumors can be very inconsistent in how they respond to different therapies. While the tumor of one patient can rapidly shrink when exposed to a given medication, another patient suffering from the same kind of tumor may not get any benefit from that same drug. This phenomenon highlights why personalized medicine is such an […]
Virtual Biopsy for Skin Lesions Using Vibrational Optical Coherence Tomography
Tissue biopsies of skin lesions can be unpleasant and quite painful. Moreover, a biopsy typically doesn’t sample the whole lesion and doesn’t provide much information about a given lesion’s size and depth. Now, scientists at Rutgers University have developed and tested a new device that relies on two different mechanisms to analyze skin lesions. The […]
Molecular Motors Drill Through Cancer Cells
A couple of years ago a team of U.S. and U.K. scientists came up with a way of making molecular motors that can drill through cancer cells, destroying them in the process. The researchers, from Rice University, Durham University, and North Carolina State University, used an ultraviolet (UV) light source to energize these motors, but […]
Spasers: Nanoscale Lasers Small Enough to Destroy Cancer Cells from Within
Lasers are known to do remarkable things in medicine, but their use in targeting diseased tissue is not as widespread as everyone expected it to be decades ago. One issue is that lasers are pretty indiscriminate and traditionally have beams that are still too large for extremely fine work. Researchers at the University of Arkansas […]
Mid-Infrared Imaging Made Practical for Medicine by Danish Researchers
Different wavelengths of light reveal the world in unique ways, but some are hard to see using the human eye and modern imaging technologies. Mid-infrared light, for example, can be used to look at a variety of biological processes in the body, but it is hard to track when it’s used to film at a […]
Nexus Ultrasonic Surgical Platform from Misonix FDA Cleared
Mixonix, a Farmingdale, New York company that specializes in ultrasonic devices for surgical applications such as osteotomies and debridements, won FDA clearance for the new Nexus surgical platform. The Nexus combines the capabilities of Mixonix’s three existing products, namely BoneScalpel, SonicOne and Sonastar, into a single system that can be used to perform tumor resections, […]
Avenda Health Uses Artificial Intelligence to Improve Prostate Cancer Treatment
Prostate cancer affects 1 in 9 men and is one of the most common cancers in the United States. Due to the close anatomical association between the prostate and nearby organs, well-known complications of prostate cancer treatment are urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Santa Monica-based Avenda Health hopes to use artificial intelligence to decrease rates […]
Avenda Health Uses Artificial Intelligence to Improve Prostate Cancer Treatment
Prostate cancer affects 1 in 9 men and is one of the most common cancers in the United States. Due to the close anatomical association between the prostate and nearby organs, well-known complications of prostate cancer treatment are urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Santa Monica-based Avenda Health hopes to use artificial intelligence to decrease rates […]
Mini-Brain Platform Mimics Human Brain to Help Develop Drugs, Test Therapies
Studying the effect of potential therapies on the human brain is exceedingly difficult. Laboratory animals have proven to be less than ideal as mimics for identifying how a given therapy will work in people, leading to exceedingly long and difficult research journeys. Now AxoSim, a company based in New Orleans, will soon be making its […]
3D Ultrasound Developed to Guide Treatment of Gynecological Cancers
Researchers at Western University, London Health Sciences Centre, and Lawson Health Research Institute, all in Canada, have developed and tested a new 3D ultrasound system. Designed to improve the accuracy of interstitial brachytherapy, a technique in which tiny sources of radiation are placed inside tumors, the new ultrasound may help physicians to significantly improve their […]
Liquid Biopsy for Monitoring Transplanted Stem Cells
Researchers from the University of Maryland, University of Pennsylvania, and Emory University have demonstrated that a blood test can be used to track the efficacy of transplanted stem cells. They analyzed tiny cellular components called exosomes that were secreted from transplanted stem cells. “Exosomes contain the signals of the cells they’re derived from – proteins […]
Magnetic Beads Strip Blood Samples to Allow Circulating Tumor Cell Isolation
Researchers at the University of Georgia have developed a microfluidic chip to isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples. Unlike other devices, this new chip uses magnetic microbeads to strip all the cells from the blood, leaving only the CTCs, in a technique the researchers have called “integrated ferrohydrodynamic cell separation”. The device is […]
Synthetic Proteins Designed to Halt Growth of Cancers
Stanford University scientists have developed a novel approach to halting the growth of cancer cells while preserving normal function in healthy cells. The research was published in journal Science, and though it was so far conducted only on groups of cancer cells outside a body, the findings are incredibly promising. The new approach focuses on […]
System Separates, Sequences Circulating Tumor Cells from Whole Blood
Engineers at the University of Michigan have developed a high speed microfluidic chip that can separate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood and analyze them. The technology, which may make biopsies and other diagnostic tests unnecessary in many cases, is impressive in that it is able to attract highly rare CTCs and to sequence […]