Treatment for cancer could be revolutionized with the help of a new fluid biopsy technique, which highlights tumour cells in the bloodstream, say US researchers. They have developed a technique of attaching fluorescent tags to cancer cells proteins, which make them glow under particular light conditions.
Researchers have successfully tested the technique on patients of prostate, pancreatic and breast cancer. The new technique paves the way to real time assessment, therefore accelerating treatment of disease. The new technique uses dyes containing antibodies which are attached to specific protein found in circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in blood samples.
When dyes containing antibodies are attached to the cancer cells, they shine in different colours, allowing the cells and proteins to be identified. The resulting high resolution microscope images reveal complicated details of the cells that can be analyzed in the laboratory. Fluid biopsy will also be an invaluable tool for experts which can help them unearth the mysteries of metastasis.
Metastasis is the lethal spread of cancer from one part of the body to another. The new technique found more than five CTCs (circulating tumour cells) per millilitre of in blood stream of eighty percent of twenty prostate cancer patients, seventy percent of thirty breast cancer patients, and fifty percent of eighteen pancreatic cancer patients.
If they could assess the disease in real time, they can make quantitative treatment decisions in real time. These decisions include predictive decisions about therapeutic response, diagnostic decisions and prognostic decisions about outcome, stated study author Prof Peter Kuhn, from Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. The study findings published in the Institute of Physics journal Physical Biology.
According to Dr Kelly Bethel, senior clinical investigator from Prof Kuhn team, the high definition method gives a comprehensive portrait of these intangible cells that are caught in the act of spreading around the body. It is extraordinary and they have never been able to see them routinely and in high definition like this before.