UMass Amherst Chemists Develop Nose-like Sensor Array to 'Smell' Cancer Diagnoses (treatment, tumor)

[Brian.Pearson]

AMHERST, Mass. – In the fight against cancer, knowing the enemy’s exact identity is crucial for diagnosis and treatment, especially in metastatic cancers, those that spread between organs and tissues. Now chemists led by Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a rapid, sensitive way to detect microscopic levels of many different metastatic cell types in living tissue. Findings appear in the current issue of the journal ACS Nano.

In a pre-clinical non-small-cell lung cancer metastasis model in mice developed by Frank Jirik and colleagues at the University of Calgary, Rotello’s team at UMass Amherst use a sensor array system of gold nanoparticles and proteins to “smell” different cancer types in much the same way our noses identify and remember different odors. The new work builds on Rotello and colleagues’ earlier development of a “chemical nose” array of nanoparticles and polymers able to differentiate between normal cells and cancerous ones.

Rotello explains, “With this tool, we can now actually detect and identify metastasized tumor cells in living animal tissue rapidly and effectively using the ‘nose’ strategy. We were the first group to use this approach in cells, which is relatively straightforward. Now we’ve done it in tissues and organs, which are very much more complex. With this advance, we’re much closer to the promise of a general diagnostic test.”

[bluskyz]

Sounds very promising to me. But when will this be out there helping people? I hope this will not be like many other "advances" we never hear about again.

[christina0001]

I'd rather be sniffed than have to sit through a bunch of imaging tests!