Researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered a flaw in the armor of the most aggressive form of lung cancer, a weakness that doctors may be able to exploit to slow or even stop the disease. Remarkably, this vulnerability stems from the very aggressiveness that makes the cancer so deadly.
Using an existing drug, the scientists were able to halt the progression of small cell lung cancer tumors in genetically engineered mice. This was a notable achievement because small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is known for spreading quickly throughout the body. The finding raises the hope that the drug, which is being tested in people overseas for several types of cancers in clinical trials, might prove to be an effective way to control or prevent small cell tumor growth – possibly keeping the cancer as harmless tiny lesions.
Showing posts with label Tumor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tumor. Show all posts
18 August, 2016
02 August, 2016
Patch that delivers drug, gene and light-based therapy to tumor sites shows promising results
Approximately one in 20 people will develop colorectal cancer in their lifetime, making it the third-most prevalent form of the disease in the U.S. In Europe, it is the second-most common form of cancer.
The most widely used first line of treatment is surgery, but this can result in incomplete removal of the tumor. Cancer cells can be left behind, potentially leading to recurrence and increased risk of metastasis. Indeed, while many patients remain cancer-free for months or even years after surgery, tumors are known to recur in up to 50 percent of cases.
Conventional therapies used to prevent tumors recurring after surgery do not sufficiently differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells, leading to serious side effects.
In a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, researchers at MIT describe an adhesive patch that can stick to the tumor site, either before or after surgery, to deliver a triple-combination of drug, gene, and photo (light-based) therapy.
Releasing this triple combination therapy locally, at the tumor site, may increase the efficacy of the treatment, according to Natalie Artzi, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who led the research.
The general approach to cancer treatment today is the use of systemic, or whole-body, therapies such as chemotherapy drugs. But the lack of specificity of anticancer drugs means they produce undesired side effects when systemically administered.
What’s more, only a small portion of the drug reaches the tumor site itself, meaning the primary tumor is not treated as effectively as it should be.
Indeed, recent research in mice has found that only 0.7 percent of nanoparticles administered systemically actually found their way to the target tumor.
“This means that we are treating both the source of the cancer — the tumor — and the metastases resulting from that source, in a suboptimal manner,” Artzi says. “That is what prompted us to think a little bit differently, to look at how we can leverage advancements in materials science, and in particular nanotechnology, to treat the primary tumor in a local and sustained manner.”
The researchers have developed a triple-therapy hydrogel patch, which can be used to treat tumors locally. This is particularly effective as it can treat not only the tumor itself but any cells left at the site after surgery, preventing the cancer from recurring or metastasizing in the future.
Firstly, the patch contains gold nanorods, which heat up when near-infrared radiation is applied to the local area. This is used to thermally ablate, or destroy, the tumor.
These nanorods are also equipped with a chemotherapy drug, which is released when they are heated, to target the tumor and its surrounding cells.
Finally, gold nanospheres that do not heat up in response to the near-infrared radiation are used to deliver RNA, or gene therapy to the site, in order to silence an important oncogene in colorectal cancer. Oncogenes are genes that can cause healthy cells to transform into tumor cells.
The researchers envision that a clinician could remove the tumor, and then apply the patch to the inner surface of the colon, to ensure that no cells that are likely to cause cancer recurrence remain at the site. As the patch degrades, it will gradually release the various therapies.
The patch can also serve as a neoadjuvant, a therapy designed to shrink tumors prior to their resection, Artzi says.
When the researchers tested the treatment in mice, they found that in 40 percent of cases where the patch was not applied after tumor removal, the cancer returned.
But when the patch was applied after surgery, the treatment resulted in complete remission.
Indeed, even when the tumor was not removed, the triple-combination therapy alone was enough to destroy it.
The technology is an extraordinary and unprecedented synergy of three concurrent modalities of treatment, according to Mauro Ferrari, president and CEO of the Houston Methodist Research Institute, who was not involved in the research.
“What is particularly intriguing is that by delivering the treatment locally, multimodal therapy may be better than systemic therapy, at least in certain clinical situations,” Ferrari says.
Unlike existing colorectal cancer surgery, this treatment can also be applied in a minimally invasive manner. In the next phase of their work, the researchers hope to move to experiments in larger models, in order to use colonoscopy equipment not only for cancer diagnosis but also to inject the patch to the site of a tumor, when detected.
More information can be found from MIT website.
The most widely used first line of treatment is surgery, but this can result in incomplete removal of the tumor. Cancer cells can be left behind, potentially leading to recurrence and increased risk of metastasis. Indeed, while many patients remain cancer-free for months or even years after surgery, tumors are known to recur in up to 50 percent of cases.
Conventional therapies used to prevent tumors recurring after surgery do not sufficiently differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells, leading to serious side effects.
In a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, researchers at MIT describe an adhesive patch that can stick to the tumor site, either before or after surgery, to deliver a triple-combination of drug, gene, and photo (light-based) therapy.
Releasing this triple combination therapy locally, at the tumor site, may increase the efficacy of the treatment, according to Natalie Artzi, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who led the research.
The general approach to cancer treatment today is the use of systemic, or whole-body, therapies such as chemotherapy drugs. But the lack of specificity of anticancer drugs means they produce undesired side effects when systemically administered.
What’s more, only a small portion of the drug reaches the tumor site itself, meaning the primary tumor is not treated as effectively as it should be.
Indeed, recent research in mice has found that only 0.7 percent of nanoparticles administered systemically actually found their way to the target tumor.
“This means that we are treating both the source of the cancer — the tumor — and the metastases resulting from that source, in a suboptimal manner,” Artzi says. “That is what prompted us to think a little bit differently, to look at how we can leverage advancements in materials science, and in particular nanotechnology, to treat the primary tumor in a local and sustained manner.”
The researchers have developed a triple-therapy hydrogel patch, which can be used to treat tumors locally. This is particularly effective as it can treat not only the tumor itself but any cells left at the site after surgery, preventing the cancer from recurring or metastasizing in the future.
Firstly, the patch contains gold nanorods, which heat up when near-infrared radiation is applied to the local area. This is used to thermally ablate, or destroy, the tumor.
These nanorods are also equipped with a chemotherapy drug, which is released when they are heated, to target the tumor and its surrounding cells.
Finally, gold nanospheres that do not heat up in response to the near-infrared radiation are used to deliver RNA, or gene therapy to the site, in order to silence an important oncogene in colorectal cancer. Oncogenes are genes that can cause healthy cells to transform into tumor cells.
The researchers envision that a clinician could remove the tumor, and then apply the patch to the inner surface of the colon, to ensure that no cells that are likely to cause cancer recurrence remain at the site. As the patch degrades, it will gradually release the various therapies.
The patch can also serve as a neoadjuvant, a therapy designed to shrink tumors prior to their resection, Artzi says.
When the researchers tested the treatment in mice, they found that in 40 percent of cases where the patch was not applied after tumor removal, the cancer returned.
But when the patch was applied after surgery, the treatment resulted in complete remission.
Indeed, even when the tumor was not removed, the triple-combination therapy alone was enough to destroy it.
The technology is an extraordinary and unprecedented synergy of three concurrent modalities of treatment, according to Mauro Ferrari, president and CEO of the Houston Methodist Research Institute, who was not involved in the research.
“What is particularly intriguing is that by delivering the treatment locally, multimodal therapy may be better than systemic therapy, at least in certain clinical situations,” Ferrari says.
Unlike existing colorectal cancer surgery, this treatment can also be applied in a minimally invasive manner. In the next phase of their work, the researchers hope to move to experiments in larger models, in order to use colonoscopy equipment not only for cancer diagnosis but also to inject the patch to the site of a tumor, when detected.
More information can be found from MIT website.
26 July, 2016
Cheap paper strips for cancer testing at home
Chemists at The Ohio State University are developing paper strips that detect diseases including cancer and malaria—for a cost of 50 cents per strip.
The idea, explained Abraham Badu-Tawiah, is that people could apply a drop of blood to the paper at home and mail it to a laboratory on a regular basis—and see a doctor only if the test comes out positive. The researchers found that the tests were accurate even a month after the blood sample was taken, proving they could work for people living in remote areas.
The assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State conceived of the papers as a way to get cheap malaria diagnoses into the hands of people in rural Africa and southeast Asia, where the disease kills hundreds of thousands of people and infects hundreds of millions every year.
But in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, he and his colleagues report that the test can be tailored to detect any disease for which the human body produces antibodies, including ovarian cancer and cancer of the large intestine.
The patent-pending technology could bring disease diagnosis to people who need it most—those who don’t have regular access to a doctor or can’t afford regular in-person visits, Badu-Tawiah said.
“We want to empower people. If you care at all about your health and you have reason to worry about a condition, then you don’t want to wait until you get sick to go to the hospital. You could test yourself as often as you want,” he said.
The technology resembles today’s “lab on a chip” diagnostics, but instead of plastic, the “chip” is made from sheets of plain white paper stuck together with two-sided adhesive tape and run through a typical ink jet printer.
Instead of regular ink, however, the researchers use wax ink to trace the outline of channels and reservoirs on the paper. The wax penetrates the paper and forms a waterproof barrier to capture the blood sample and keep it between layers. One 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper can hold dozens of individual tests that can then be cut apart into strips, each a little larger than a postage stamp.
“To get tested, all a person would have to do is put a drop of blood on the paper strip, fold it in half, put it in an envelope and mail it,” Badu-Tawiah said.
The technology works differently than other paper-based medical diagnostics like home pregnancy tests, which are coated with enzymes or gold nanoparticles to make the paper change color. Instead, the paper contains small synthetic chemical probes that carry a positive charge. It’s these “ionic” probes that allow ultra-sensitive detection by a handheld mass spectrometer.
“Enzymes are picky. They have to be kept at just the right temperature and they can’t be stored dry or exposed to light,” Badu-Tawiah said. “But the ionic probes are hardy. They are not affected by light, temperature, humidity—even the heat in Africa can’t do anything to them. So you can mail one of these strips to a hospital and know that it will be readable when it gets there.”
The chemists designed ionic probes to tag specific antibodies that extract the disease biomarker from the blood and onto the paper chip. Once they are extracted, the chemicals stay unchanged until the paper is dipped in an ammonia solution at the laboratory. There, someone peels the paper layers apart and holds them in front of a mass spectrometer, which detects the presence of the probes based on their atomic characteristics—and, by extension, the presence of biomarkers in an infected person’s blood.
Badu-Tawiah and postdoctoral researchers Suming Chen and Qiongqiong Wan successfully demonstrated that they could detect protein biomarkers from the most common malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is most prevalent in Africa.
They also successfully detected the protein biomarker for ovarian cancer, known as cancer antigen 125, and the carcinoembryonic antigen, which is a marker for cancer of the large intestine, among other cancers.
They worked with former doctoral student Yang Song in the lab of colleague Vicki Wysocki, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, to study how the probes stick to the antibodies with a high-resolution mass spectrometer. Wysocki is the Ohio Eminent Scholar of Macromolecular Structure and Function and director of the Campus Chemical Instrument Center at Ohio State.
After confirming that their tests worked, Badu-Tawiah and his team stored the strips away and re-tested them every few days to see if the signal detected by the mass spectrometer would fade over time. It didn’t. The signal was just as strong after 30 days as on day one, meaning that the disease proteins were stable and detectable even after a month.
Since the antibody strips survive more than long enough to reach a lab by mail, they could open up a whole new world of medical care for people in rural communities—even in the United States, Badu-Tawiah said. Even for people living in the city, testing themselves at home would save money compared to going to the doctor.
In the US, he said, the tests would be ideal for people who have a family history of cancer or have successfully undergone cancer treatment. Instead of waiting to visit a doctor every six months to confirm that they are still in remission, they could test themselves from home more frequently.
In the case of malaria, the human and financial costs are high, especially in Africa.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by parasites. The infection starts with flulike symptoms that can develop into kidney failure or other complications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were 214 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2015, and 438,000 people died—mostly children in Africa.
“In Africa, malaria is so common that whenever you get feverish, the first thing you think is, ‘Oh, it’s probably malaria,’” Badu-Tawiah said.
While the prototype test strips at Ohio State cost about 50 cents each to produce, those costs would likely go down with mass production, he said. The greatest cost of using the strips would fall to urban medical facilities, which would have to purchase mass spectrometers to read the results. Model portable instruments can cost $100,000 but less expensive handheld mass specs are under development.
Still, Badu-Tawiah pointed out, an initial investment in mass specs would be more than offset by the potential boon to Africa’s economy. UNICEF estimates that malaria costs the continent $12 billion in lost worker productivity every year.
In the United States, where mass spectrometers are more common, the cost savings would come in the form of reduced insurance use and fewer out-of-pocket expenses from going to the doctor less often.
“Although this approach requires an initial investment, we believe the low-cost paper-based consumable devices will make it sustainable,” Badu-Tawiah said. “We can set one small instrument at a grocery store, then sell the paper strips for just 50 cents per test. The same for Africa, and perhaps much cheaper there.”
The university will license the technology to a medical diagnostics company for further development, and Badu-Tawiah hopes to be able to test the strips in a clinical setting within three years. In the meantime, he and his colleagues are working to make the tests more sensitive, so that people could eventually use them non-invasively, with saliva or urine as the test material instead of blood.
The idea, explained Abraham Badu-Tawiah, is that people could apply a drop of blood to the paper at home and mail it to a laboratory on a regular basis—and see a doctor only if the test comes out positive. The researchers found that the tests were accurate even a month after the blood sample was taken, proving they could work for people living in remote areas.
The assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State conceived of the papers as a way to get cheap malaria diagnoses into the hands of people in rural Africa and southeast Asia, where the disease kills hundreds of thousands of people and infects hundreds of millions every year.
But in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, he and his colleagues report that the test can be tailored to detect any disease for which the human body produces antibodies, including ovarian cancer and cancer of the large intestine.
The patent-pending technology could bring disease diagnosis to people who need it most—those who don’t have regular access to a doctor or can’t afford regular in-person visits, Badu-Tawiah said.
“We want to empower people. If you care at all about your health and you have reason to worry about a condition, then you don’t want to wait until you get sick to go to the hospital. You could test yourself as often as you want,” he said.
The technology resembles today’s “lab on a chip” diagnostics, but instead of plastic, the “chip” is made from sheets of plain white paper stuck together with two-sided adhesive tape and run through a typical ink jet printer.
Instead of regular ink, however, the researchers use wax ink to trace the outline of channels and reservoirs on the paper. The wax penetrates the paper and forms a waterproof barrier to capture the blood sample and keep it between layers. One 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper can hold dozens of individual tests that can then be cut apart into strips, each a little larger than a postage stamp.
“To get tested, all a person would have to do is put a drop of blood on the paper strip, fold it in half, put it in an envelope and mail it,” Badu-Tawiah said.
The technology works differently than other paper-based medical diagnostics like home pregnancy tests, which are coated with enzymes or gold nanoparticles to make the paper change color. Instead, the paper contains small synthetic chemical probes that carry a positive charge. It’s these “ionic” probes that allow ultra-sensitive detection by a handheld mass spectrometer.
“Enzymes are picky. They have to be kept at just the right temperature and they can’t be stored dry or exposed to light,” Badu-Tawiah said. “But the ionic probes are hardy. They are not affected by light, temperature, humidity—even the heat in Africa can’t do anything to them. So you can mail one of these strips to a hospital and know that it will be readable when it gets there.”
The chemists designed ionic probes to tag specific antibodies that extract the disease biomarker from the blood and onto the paper chip. Once they are extracted, the chemicals stay unchanged until the paper is dipped in an ammonia solution at the laboratory. There, someone peels the paper layers apart and holds them in front of a mass spectrometer, which detects the presence of the probes based on their atomic characteristics—and, by extension, the presence of biomarkers in an infected person’s blood.
Badu-Tawiah and postdoctoral researchers Suming Chen and Qiongqiong Wan successfully demonstrated that they could detect protein biomarkers from the most common malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is most prevalent in Africa.
They also successfully detected the protein biomarker for ovarian cancer, known as cancer antigen 125, and the carcinoembryonic antigen, which is a marker for cancer of the large intestine, among other cancers.
They worked with former doctoral student Yang Song in the lab of colleague Vicki Wysocki, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, to study how the probes stick to the antibodies with a high-resolution mass spectrometer. Wysocki is the Ohio Eminent Scholar of Macromolecular Structure and Function and director of the Campus Chemical Instrument Center at Ohio State.
After confirming that their tests worked, Badu-Tawiah and his team stored the strips away and re-tested them every few days to see if the signal detected by the mass spectrometer would fade over time. It didn’t. The signal was just as strong after 30 days as on day one, meaning that the disease proteins were stable and detectable even after a month.
Since the antibody strips survive more than long enough to reach a lab by mail, they could open up a whole new world of medical care for people in rural communities—even in the United States, Badu-Tawiah said. Even for people living in the city, testing themselves at home would save money compared to going to the doctor.
In the US, he said, the tests would be ideal for people who have a family history of cancer or have successfully undergone cancer treatment. Instead of waiting to visit a doctor every six months to confirm that they are still in remission, they could test themselves from home more frequently.
In the case of malaria, the human and financial costs are high, especially in Africa.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by parasites. The infection starts with flulike symptoms that can develop into kidney failure or other complications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were 214 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2015, and 438,000 people died—mostly children in Africa.
“In Africa, malaria is so common that whenever you get feverish, the first thing you think is, ‘Oh, it’s probably malaria,’” Badu-Tawiah said.
While the prototype test strips at Ohio State cost about 50 cents each to produce, those costs would likely go down with mass production, he said. The greatest cost of using the strips would fall to urban medical facilities, which would have to purchase mass spectrometers to read the results. Model portable instruments can cost $100,000 but less expensive handheld mass specs are under development.
Still, Badu-Tawiah pointed out, an initial investment in mass specs would be more than offset by the potential boon to Africa’s economy. UNICEF estimates that malaria costs the continent $12 billion in lost worker productivity every year.
In the United States, where mass spectrometers are more common, the cost savings would come in the form of reduced insurance use and fewer out-of-pocket expenses from going to the doctor less often.
“Although this approach requires an initial investment, we believe the low-cost paper-based consumable devices will make it sustainable,” Badu-Tawiah said. “We can set one small instrument at a grocery store, then sell the paper strips for just 50 cents per test. The same for Africa, and perhaps much cheaper there.”
The university will license the technology to a medical diagnostics company for further development, and Badu-Tawiah hopes to be able to test the strips in a clinical setting within three years. In the meantime, he and his colleagues are working to make the tests more sensitive, so that people could eventually use them non-invasively, with saliva or urine as the test material instead of blood.
Full story can be found from The Ohio State University website.
25 July, 2016
An engineered protein can disrupt tumor-promoting ‘messages’ in human cells
Over a century of research has shined light on the once-murky innards of our cells, from the genes that serve as our “blueprints” to the proteins and other molecules that are our cellular taskmasters.
Building on this basic knowledge, the search is underway for cellular mechanisms that could serve as gateways for new therapies. These could lead to precise treatments for disease — targeting a specific cellular function or gene with fewer unintended side effects. Ideally, these effects would also be temporary, returning cells to normal operation once the underlying condition has been treated.
A team of researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Trento in Italy announced findings that could pave the way for these therapies. In a paper published July 18 in Nature Chemical Biology, they unveiled an engineered protein that they designed to repress a specific cancer-promoting message within cells.
And that approach to protein design could be modified to target other cellular messages and functions, said senior author and UW chemistry professor Gabriele Varani.
“What we show here is a proving ground — a process to determine how to make the correct changes to proteins,” he said.
For their approach, Varani and his team modified a human protein called Rbfox2, which occurs naturally in cells and binds to microRNAs. These aptly named small RNA molecules adjust gene expression levels in cells like a dimmer switch. Varani’s group sought to engineer Rbfox2 to bind itself to a specific microRNA called miR-21, which is present in high levels in many tumors, increases the expression of cancer-promoting genes and decreases cancer suppressors. If a protein like Rbfox2 could bind to miR-21, the researchers hypothesized, it could repress miR-21’s tumor growth effects.
But for this approach to be successful, the protein must bind to miR-21 and no other microRNA. Luckily, all RNA molecules, including microRNAs, have an inherent property that imbues them with specificity. They consist of a chain of chemical “letters,” each with a unique order or sequence. To date, no other research team had ever successfully altered a protein to bind to microRNAs.
“That is because our knowledge of protein structure is much better than our knowledge of RNA structure,” said Varani. “We historically lacked key information about how RNA folds up and how proteins bind RNA at the atomic level.”
UW researchers relied on high-quality data on Rbfox2’s structure to understand, down to single atoms, how it binds to the unique sequence of “letters” in its natural RNA targets. Then they predicted how Rbfox2’s sequence would have to change to make it bind to miR-21 instead. Elegantly, altering just four carefully selected amino acids made Rbfox2 shift its attachment preference to miR-21, preventing the microRNA from passing along its tumor-promoting message.
The UW team spent several years proving this, since they had to test each change individually and in combination. They also had to make sure that the modified Rbfox2 protein would bind strongly to miR-21 but not other microRNAs. Since microRNAs have many functions in cells, it would be counterproductive to repress miR-21 while disrupting other normal microRNA-mediated functions.
The researchers also engineered a second protein that should clear miR-21 from cells entirely. They did this by grafting the regions of Rbfox2 that bound to miR-21 onto a separate protein called Dicer. Dicer normally chops RNAs into small chunks and generates functional microRNAs. But the hybrid Rbfox2-Dicer protein displayed a specific affinity to slice miR-21 into oblivion.
Varani and his team believe that Rbfox2 could be redesigned to bind to microRNA targets other than miR-21. There are thousands of microRNAs to choose from, and many have been implicated in diseases. The key to realizing this potential would be in streamlining and automating the painstaking methods the team used to model Rbfox2’s atomic-level interactions with RNA.
“This method relies on knowledge of high-quality structures,” said Varani. “That allowed us to see which alterations would change binding to the microRNA target.”
Not only would these be useful laboratory tools to study microRNA functions, but they could — in time — form the basis of new therapies to treat disease.
Lead author on the paper is former UW researcher Yu Chen, who is now at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Other UW chemistry co-authors were Fang Yang, Tom Pavelitz, Wen Yang, Katherine Godin, Matthew Walker and Suxin Zheng. Co-authors from the University of Trento include Lorena Zubovic and Paolo Macchi. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the University of Trento and the government of Trento province.
Building on this basic knowledge, the search is underway for cellular mechanisms that could serve as gateways for new therapies. These could lead to precise treatments for disease — targeting a specific cellular function or gene with fewer unintended side effects. Ideally, these effects would also be temporary, returning cells to normal operation once the underlying condition has been treated.
A team of researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Trento in Italy announced findings that could pave the way for these therapies. In a paper published July 18 in Nature Chemical Biology, they unveiled an engineered protein that they designed to repress a specific cancer-promoting message within cells.
And that approach to protein design could be modified to target other cellular messages and functions, said senior author and UW chemistry professor Gabriele Varani.
“What we show here is a proving ground — a process to determine how to make the correct changes to proteins,” he said.
For their approach, Varani and his team modified a human protein called Rbfox2, which occurs naturally in cells and binds to microRNAs. These aptly named small RNA molecules adjust gene expression levels in cells like a dimmer switch. Varani’s group sought to engineer Rbfox2 to bind itself to a specific microRNA called miR-21, which is present in high levels in many tumors, increases the expression of cancer-promoting genes and decreases cancer suppressors. If a protein like Rbfox2 could bind to miR-21, the researchers hypothesized, it could repress miR-21’s tumor growth effects.
But for this approach to be successful, the protein must bind to miR-21 and no other microRNA. Luckily, all RNA molecules, including microRNAs, have an inherent property that imbues them with specificity. They consist of a chain of chemical “letters,” each with a unique order or sequence. To date, no other research team had ever successfully altered a protein to bind to microRNAs.
“That is because our knowledge of protein structure is much better than our knowledge of RNA structure,” said Varani. “We historically lacked key information about how RNA folds up and how proteins bind RNA at the atomic level.”
UW researchers relied on high-quality data on Rbfox2’s structure to understand, down to single atoms, how it binds to the unique sequence of “letters” in its natural RNA targets. Then they predicted how Rbfox2’s sequence would have to change to make it bind to miR-21 instead. Elegantly, altering just four carefully selected amino acids made Rbfox2 shift its attachment preference to miR-21, preventing the microRNA from passing along its tumor-promoting message.
The UW team spent several years proving this, since they had to test each change individually and in combination. They also had to make sure that the modified Rbfox2 protein would bind strongly to miR-21 but not other microRNAs. Since microRNAs have many functions in cells, it would be counterproductive to repress miR-21 while disrupting other normal microRNA-mediated functions.
The researchers also engineered a second protein that should clear miR-21 from cells entirely. They did this by grafting the regions of Rbfox2 that bound to miR-21 onto a separate protein called Dicer. Dicer normally chops RNAs into small chunks and generates functional microRNAs. But the hybrid Rbfox2-Dicer protein displayed a specific affinity to slice miR-21 into oblivion.
Varani and his team believe that Rbfox2 could be redesigned to bind to microRNA targets other than miR-21. There are thousands of microRNAs to choose from, and many have been implicated in diseases. The key to realizing this potential would be in streamlining and automating the painstaking methods the team used to model Rbfox2’s atomic-level interactions with RNA.
“This method relies on knowledge of high-quality structures,” said Varani. “That allowed us to see which alterations would change binding to the microRNA target.”
Not only would these be useful laboratory tools to study microRNA functions, but they could — in time — form the basis of new therapies to treat disease.
Lead author on the paper is former UW researcher Yu Chen, who is now at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Other UW chemistry co-authors were Fang Yang, Tom Pavelitz, Wen Yang, Katherine Godin, Matthew Walker and Suxin Zheng. Co-authors from the University of Trento include Lorena Zubovic and Paolo Macchi. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the University of Trento and the government of Trento province.
Full story can be found from University of Washington website.
22 July, 2016
Novocure Receives FDA Approval for Second Generation Optune System
Novocure announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its premarket approval (PMA) supplement application for Novocure’s second generation Optune system. The new smaller, lighter Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) delivery system is now available to glioblastoma (GBM) patients in the United States.
Novocure designed the second generation Optune system to make treatment with TTFields more convenient and manageable for GBM patients. The new model features a TTFields generator that is less than half the weight and half the size of the generator in the first generation Optune system. Including its battery, the second generation Optune system weighs 2.7 pounds, compared to the first generation system that weighs 6 pounds. Novocure reduced the size and weight of Optune by utilizing novel digital signal generation technology. Additional improvements include: easy-grip texture that allows for better handling; a battery indicator that displays power and alerts patients when to change the battery; a light-detecting sensor that auto-dims the device and charger in the dark; and a “No-Stop Swap” feature that enables patients to change batteries or power source without disrupting delivery of TTFields therapy.
Novocure started offering the second generation Optune system to patients in Germany in October 2015 and has since made it available to all new patients in Europe.
“From the start, Novocure’s mission has been to improve the lives of cancer patients,” said Mike Ambrogi, Novocure’s Chief Operating Officer. “The second generation Optune system was designed to be more convenient and to make it even easier for patients to incorporate treatment with TTFields into their lives. We have received positive feedback from our second generation Optune patients in Europe, and we are excited to roll out our new device to patients in the United States.”
Novocure will offer existing Optune patients in the United States the opportunity to convert to the second generation Optune system over the next several weeks. All new patients will receive the second generation Optune system.
“We are happy to receive FDA approval of our second generation Optune system,” said Asaf Danziger, Novocure’s Chief Executive Officer. “We believe the improvements incorporated into the second generation Optune system will make a big difference to the patients and families who face this devastating disease every day. We will continue to work to improve our technology and patient experience.”
Novocure designed the second generation Optune system to make treatment with TTFields more convenient and manageable for GBM patients. The new model features a TTFields generator that is less than half the weight and half the size of the generator in the first generation Optune system. Including its battery, the second generation Optune system weighs 2.7 pounds, compared to the first generation system that weighs 6 pounds. Novocure reduced the size and weight of Optune by utilizing novel digital signal generation technology. Additional improvements include: easy-grip texture that allows for better handling; a battery indicator that displays power and alerts patients when to change the battery; a light-detecting sensor that auto-dims the device and charger in the dark; and a “No-Stop Swap” feature that enables patients to change batteries or power source without disrupting delivery of TTFields therapy.
Novocure started offering the second generation Optune system to patients in Germany in October 2015 and has since made it available to all new patients in Europe.
“From the start, Novocure’s mission has been to improve the lives of cancer patients,” said Mike Ambrogi, Novocure’s Chief Operating Officer. “The second generation Optune system was designed to be more convenient and to make it even easier for patients to incorporate treatment with TTFields into their lives. We have received positive feedback from our second generation Optune patients in Europe, and we are excited to roll out our new device to patients in the United States.”
Novocure will offer existing Optune patients in the United States the opportunity to convert to the second generation Optune system over the next several weeks. All new patients will receive the second generation Optune system.
“We are happy to receive FDA approval of our second generation Optune system,” said Asaf Danziger, Novocure’s Chief Executive Officer. “We believe the improvements incorporated into the second generation Optune system will make a big difference to the patients and families who face this devastating disease every day. We will continue to work to improve our technology and patient experience.”
A press release can be found from Novocure website.
10 June, 2016
High-definition imaging to improve early diagnosis of cancer
Researchers from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) are involved in a European network to develop an endoscopic scanner for early detection of certain types of cancers that have a high mortality rate today.
Endo TOFPET-US project aims to develop a generation of medical scanners specifically designed for the examination of certain organs. Endo TOFPET-US is an international consortium which is technically led by CERN and uses the latest advances on detectors of high energy physics to enhance the quality of nuclear medical images, particularly the images known as Positron Emission Tomography (PET).
Researchers from Biomedical Image Technologies (BIT) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) are involved in the project through the PicoSec educational project and have collaborated in the design and implementation of both the electronics and data acquisition system of the developed sensor. This work was carried out along with the lab of Experimental High Energy Physics and Associated Instrumentation in Portugal (LIP) that gave as a result the spin-off company PETsys Electronics SA. This electronics will help obtain high-definition images that will allow us to early detect cancers. An example is the case of pancreatic cancer that has a mortality rate up to 90% nowadays.
The latest innovations in detectors for high energy physics carried out in CERN are exceeding the speed limit when detecting elementary particles. PET medical imaging is one application of this technology and consists in a technique that detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting and which is used in medical scanners for cancer diagnosis.
As part of the Seventh Framework Programme, the European Union funded the international collaboration known as EndoTOFPET-US in which various multidisciplinary groups joined forces to develop the first endoscopic PET scanner for specific organs. Besides, in order to boost the future of research in Europe, this consortium trained a group of young researchers who participated in the development of the scanner within the PicoSEC programme.
BIT researchers from School of Telecommunications Engineering at UPM took part of this project and have actively participated in the design and implementation of the electronics and the data acquisition system of the detector with the collaboration of PETsys Electronics SA.
In spite of the latest advances in cancer detection and diagnosis, some types of cancers are detected in advanced stages due to their morphology and location. Improving an early detection of the different types of cancers is essential to increase the survival rates of this disease.
The project includes two trends in medical imaging: detectors for examination of certain organs and a multimodal imaging technique, all this in order to provide data about the cancer that is not available so far.
In the case of conventional PET scanners, the patient's body is introduced in a ring of detectors to obtain a cross-section image. Given the new possibilities of miniaturization, researchers are studying a new asymmetric architecture in which a miniaturized detector is introduced inside the patient's body and placed close to the organ of interest. As a result, this proximity provides higher sensitivity since the patient would receive lower radioactive dose to visualize the lesion without losing the image quality.
In addition to this sensitivity, the new endoscopic detector includes other innovative features. According to UPM researchers: “thanks to its high-speed electronics, this scanner measures the time of flight of photons and this allows researchers a precise identification of the origin point in where particles are concentrated in the tumor mass, filtering the background noise and giving as a result clear images”. Researchers also add: “the system has a high degree of pixels, providing higher spatial resolution of the image and detecting millimeter lesions”.
The project also includes another trend in biomedical imaging, the multimodal imaging, a way to obtain information by combining diverse techniques and merging the resulting images. Specifically, the scanner combines ultrasounds (US), which give morphological information of the area of interest, with PET, that provides metabolic information to identify cancerous cells.
This innovative scanner requires a high-performance data acquisition system. Thus, UPM researchers in collaboration with PETSys Electronics SA have designed an intelligent, distributed and asymmetric system, which manages a great volume of data due to the large number of channels with different data rates for each type of detector (Endoscopic and abdominal detectors).
Part of the success of this system is based on the decentralization, since this system moves part of its complexity to the electronics embedded in the detectors. Therefore, the system can implement a multi-level triggering scheme with various stages of filtering data depending on the information available on each stage.
According to UPM researchers: “this new generation of endoscopic scanners will contribute the development of devices that will allow us to visualize cancers in the early stages, and consequently to enhance their prognosis”.
Endo TOFPET-US project aims to develop a generation of medical scanners specifically designed for the examination of certain organs. Endo TOFPET-US is an international consortium which is technically led by CERN and uses the latest advances on detectors of high energy physics to enhance the quality of nuclear medical images, particularly the images known as Positron Emission Tomography (PET).
Researchers from Biomedical Image Technologies (BIT) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) are involved in the project through the PicoSec educational project and have collaborated in the design and implementation of both the electronics and data acquisition system of the developed sensor. This work was carried out along with the lab of Experimental High Energy Physics and Associated Instrumentation in Portugal (LIP) that gave as a result the spin-off company PETsys Electronics SA. This electronics will help obtain high-definition images that will allow us to early detect cancers. An example is the case of pancreatic cancer that has a mortality rate up to 90% nowadays.
The latest innovations in detectors for high energy physics carried out in CERN are exceeding the speed limit when detecting elementary particles. PET medical imaging is one application of this technology and consists in a technique that detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting and which is used in medical scanners for cancer diagnosis.
As part of the Seventh Framework Programme, the European Union funded the international collaboration known as EndoTOFPET-US in which various multidisciplinary groups joined forces to develop the first endoscopic PET scanner for specific organs. Besides, in order to boost the future of research in Europe, this consortium trained a group of young researchers who participated in the development of the scanner within the PicoSEC programme.
BIT researchers from School of Telecommunications Engineering at UPM took part of this project and have actively participated in the design and implementation of the electronics and the data acquisition system of the detector with the collaboration of PETsys Electronics SA.
In spite of the latest advances in cancer detection and diagnosis, some types of cancers are detected in advanced stages due to their morphology and location. Improving an early detection of the different types of cancers is essential to increase the survival rates of this disease.
The project includes two trends in medical imaging: detectors for examination of certain organs and a multimodal imaging technique, all this in order to provide data about the cancer that is not available so far.
In the case of conventional PET scanners, the patient's body is introduced in a ring of detectors to obtain a cross-section image. Given the new possibilities of miniaturization, researchers are studying a new asymmetric architecture in which a miniaturized detector is introduced inside the patient's body and placed close to the organ of interest. As a result, this proximity provides higher sensitivity since the patient would receive lower radioactive dose to visualize the lesion without losing the image quality.
In addition to this sensitivity, the new endoscopic detector includes other innovative features. According to UPM researchers: “thanks to its high-speed electronics, this scanner measures the time of flight of photons and this allows researchers a precise identification of the origin point in where particles are concentrated in the tumor mass, filtering the background noise and giving as a result clear images”. Researchers also add: “the system has a high degree of pixels, providing higher spatial resolution of the image and detecting millimeter lesions”.
The project also includes another trend in biomedical imaging, the multimodal imaging, a way to obtain information by combining diverse techniques and merging the resulting images. Specifically, the scanner combines ultrasounds (US), which give morphological information of the area of interest, with PET, that provides metabolic information to identify cancerous cells.
This innovative scanner requires a high-performance data acquisition system. Thus, UPM researchers in collaboration with PETSys Electronics SA have designed an intelligent, distributed and asymmetric system, which manages a great volume of data due to the large number of channels with different data rates for each type of detector (Endoscopic and abdominal detectors).
Part of the success of this system is based on the decentralization, since this system moves part of its complexity to the electronics embedded in the detectors. Therefore, the system can implement a multi-level triggering scheme with various stages of filtering data depending on the information available on each stage.
According to UPM researchers: “this new generation of endoscopic scanners will contribute the development of devices that will allow us to visualize cancers in the early stages, and consequently to enhance their prognosis”.
More information can be found from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid website.
08 June, 2016
Roche receives EU approval of Avastin in combination with Tarceva for patients with a specific type of advanced lung cancer
Roche announced that the European Commission has approved the use of Avastin® (bevacizumab) in combination with Tarceva® (erlotinib) for the first-line treatment of adult patients with unresectable advanced, metastatic or recurrent non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR)-activating mutations.
The pivotal phase II JO25567 study showed a statistically significant 46 percent relative reduction in the risk of disease progression or death (median PFS: 16.0 months versus 9.7 months; [HR]=0.54, p=0.0015) for people treated with the combination of Avastin plus Tarceva compared to Tarceva alone. Avastin and Tarceva each target pathways which are known to be key drivers in the development and growth of tumours. The beneficial effect of Avastin plus Tarceva is supported by results of other clinical studies which showed the combination was effective and tolerable.
“The combination of Avastin and Tarceva represents a new standard of care for patients with this type of lung cancer,” said Sandra Horning, M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Global Head of Product Development. “This approval provides physicians in Europe with a powerful combination therapy that can significantly extend progression-free survival beyond one year, representing important progress for a group of patients who typically face a poor prognosis.”
Each year, an estimated 23,000 Europeans are diagnosed with non-squamous NSCLC with EGFR-activating mutations, the equivalent of more than 60 diagnoses every day.4-8 NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer-related death in Europe and across the world. Of all cancers, lung cancer has the greatest global economic and societal impact, making improvements in outcomes for patients with lung cancer a key global healthcare challenge.
The pivotal phase II JO25567 study showed a statistically significant 46 percent relative reduction in the risk of disease progression or death (median PFS: 16.0 months versus 9.7 months; [HR]=0.54, p=0.0015) for people treated with the combination of Avastin plus Tarceva compared to Tarceva alone. Avastin and Tarceva each target pathways which are known to be key drivers in the development and growth of tumours. The beneficial effect of Avastin plus Tarceva is supported by results of other clinical studies which showed the combination was effective and tolerable.
“The combination of Avastin and Tarceva represents a new standard of care for patients with this type of lung cancer,” said Sandra Horning, M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Global Head of Product Development. “This approval provides physicians in Europe with a powerful combination therapy that can significantly extend progression-free survival beyond one year, representing important progress for a group of patients who typically face a poor prognosis.”
Each year, an estimated 23,000 Europeans are diagnosed with non-squamous NSCLC with EGFR-activating mutations, the equivalent of more than 60 diagnoses every day.4-8 NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer-related death in Europe and across the world. Of all cancers, lung cancer has the greatest global economic and societal impact, making improvements in outcomes for patients with lung cancer a key global healthcare challenge.
More information can be found from Roche website.
20 May, 2016
Tailor-Made Radiation Therapy in Cancer Treatment
Radiation therapy is one of the most essential elements in cancer treatment. But properly planning radiation therapy is a highly complex task. Fraunhofer mathematicians have joined an alliance with medical physicists and physicians to improve the therapy planning process. In doing so they have helped improve patient‘s chances of recovery.
Professor Karl-Heinz Küfer was amazed when he saw for the first time how radiation therapy for cancer patients was planned: »The processes physicians and physicists used in jointly planning radiation therapy reminded me of looking for objects in a dark room, groping around and then trying again,« recalls Küfer, a mathematician at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He recognizedthe potential for improvement and got together with physicians, physicists and information scientists to develop an alternative solution. The result was an interactive and easy-to-operate software product. It shortens the duration of radiation therapy planning, makes finding a good balance between therapy potentials and possible side-effects easier and ultimately increases the patient‘s chances of recovery.Every year in Germany approximately 483,000 people are diagnosed with cancer, with 222,000 cases ending fatally. This makes cancer Germany‘s second most common cause of death. Radiation therapy is used to treat more than half the cases. The radiation used damages cell DNA and thus inhibits their cell division or results directly in the death of the cell.
The objective of the therapy is to kill tumor cells while protecting healthy tissue. In the past the physician formulated his wishes and the radiation physicist turned these demands into a therapy plan. If the physician wasn‘t satisfied with the results, the physicist did follow-up work. Gradually the optimum solution was found. »The new thing about the mathematical approach is that from the very beginning a variety of solutions is calculated; the physician can then choose the best solution for the patient,« explains Professor Jürgen Debus, radio-oncologist at Heidelberg University Hospital, who tested the developed software in clinical use. In order to improve the process, Fraunhoferresearchers Karl-Heinz Küfer, Dr. Michael Bortz, Dr. Alexander Scherrer, Dr. Philipp Süss and Dr. Katrin Teichert considered therapy planning as a multi-criterion optimization task, in this case a balanced compromise involving around ten to fifteen in part contradictory planning goals. »The principle of the Pareto solution is a better concept here than the previous trial-and-error strategy,« Karl-Heinz Küfer emphasizes. Such a solution which cannot be improved in terms of all criteria simultaneously. When one criterion improves, another criterion has to worsen in compensation. In the case of radiation therapy this means that if the tumor is to receive a higher dose of radioactivity, the surrounding tissue will be damaged more severely.
The software was developed under the leadership of the ITWM together with the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg University Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in a Harvard Medical School researchpartnership. »With the new planning system the tumor can be better brought under control, since we can irradiate the tumor with a higher dose. This means the probability of permanently eradicating the tumor is also higher, and at the same time we can protect normal tissue which we might not have been able to protect at all inthe past,« remarks Professor Thomas Bortfeld, who in 2011 put the multi-criterion optimization approach to clinical use at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for the first time, together with RaySearch Laboratories.
With additional licensing through world market leader Varian Medical Systems startingin 2016, the technology will in the future be available at over 20,000 therapy planning stations around the world.
Development of the interactive multi-criterion radiation therapy planning system earned the Fraunhofer researchers Karl-Heinz Küfer, Michael Bortz, Alexander Scherrer, Philipp Süss and Katrin Teichert and their research partners Thomas Bortfeld, Jürgen Debus, Wolfgang Schlegel and Christian Thieke the Stifterverband for German Science‘s 2016 award. The jury specifically recognized »the broad viability of the method in treating thewidespread illness of cancer as well as the relevance to international markets.
Presentation video by Fraunhofer: Tailor-Made Radiation Therapy / Copyright Fraunhofer
Professor Karl-Heinz Küfer was amazed when he saw for the first time how radiation therapy for cancer patients was planned: »The processes physicians and physicists used in jointly planning radiation therapy reminded me of looking for objects in a dark room, groping around and then trying again,« recalls Küfer, a mathematician at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He recognizedthe potential for improvement and got together with physicians, physicists and information scientists to develop an alternative solution. The result was an interactive and easy-to-operate software product. It shortens the duration of radiation therapy planning, makes finding a good balance between therapy potentials and possible side-effects easier and ultimately increases the patient‘s chances of recovery.Every year in Germany approximately 483,000 people are diagnosed with cancer, with 222,000 cases ending fatally. This makes cancer Germany‘s second most common cause of death. Radiation therapy is used to treat more than half the cases. The radiation used damages cell DNA and thus inhibits their cell division or results directly in the death of the cell.
The objective of the therapy is to kill tumor cells while protecting healthy tissue. In the past the physician formulated his wishes and the radiation physicist turned these demands into a therapy plan. If the physician wasn‘t satisfied with the results, the physicist did follow-up work. Gradually the optimum solution was found. »The new thing about the mathematical approach is that from the very beginning a variety of solutions is calculated; the physician can then choose the best solution for the patient,« explains Professor Jürgen Debus, radio-oncologist at Heidelberg University Hospital, who tested the developed software in clinical use. In order to improve the process, Fraunhoferresearchers Karl-Heinz Küfer, Dr. Michael Bortz, Dr. Alexander Scherrer, Dr. Philipp Süss and Dr. Katrin Teichert considered therapy planning as a multi-criterion optimization task, in this case a balanced compromise involving around ten to fifteen in part contradictory planning goals. »The principle of the Pareto solution is a better concept here than the previous trial-and-error strategy,« Karl-Heinz Küfer emphasizes. Such a solution which cannot be improved in terms of all criteria simultaneously. When one criterion improves, another criterion has to worsen in compensation. In the case of radiation therapy this means that if the tumor is to receive a higher dose of radioactivity, the surrounding tissue will be damaged more severely.
The software was developed under the leadership of the ITWM together with the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg University Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in a Harvard Medical School researchpartnership. »With the new planning system the tumor can be better brought under control, since we can irradiate the tumor with a higher dose. This means the probability of permanently eradicating the tumor is also higher, and at the same time we can protect normal tissue which we might not have been able to protect at all inthe past,« remarks Professor Thomas Bortfeld, who in 2011 put the multi-criterion optimization approach to clinical use at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for the first time, together with RaySearch Laboratories.
With additional licensing through world market leader Varian Medical Systems startingin 2016, the technology will in the future be available at over 20,000 therapy planning stations around the world.
Development of the interactive multi-criterion radiation therapy planning system earned the Fraunhofer researchers Karl-Heinz Küfer, Michael Bortz, Alexander Scherrer, Philipp Süss and Katrin Teichert and their research partners Thomas Bortfeld, Jürgen Debus, Wolfgang Schlegel and Christian Thieke the Stifterverband for German Science‘s 2016 award. The jury specifically recognized »the broad viability of the method in treating thewidespread illness of cancer as well as the relevance to international markets.
More information can be found from Fraunhofer website by following this link.
19 May, 2016
Siemens enters field of molecular services for oncology
Siemens Healthineers has expanded its diagnostics portfolio with the acquisition of NEO New Oncology AG, Cologne, Germany. The company's cancer genome diagnostic platform NEO(1) will support pathologists and oncologists with comprehensive molecular information to help select targeted cancer therapies. NEO New Oncology is developing molecular profiling assays based on NGS (Next Generation Sequencing), both for tissue specimens and body liquids. This includes NEOliquid, a liquid biopsy test for the analysis of genomic profiles of solid tumors from a simple blood sample. NEO New Oncology's high quality 3rd generation hybrid capture technology allows for the analysis of circulating tumor DNA with high accuracy.
The acquisition of NEO New Oncology provides Siemens Healthineers an entry point into NGS-based genomic testing and expands its capabilities in precision medicine and companion diagnostics. Furthermore, Siemens Healthineers establishes a business prospect in the field of molecular services, with the plan to provide testing and enablement services to physicians, hospitals and laboratories, including access to the latest medical knowledge and technologies.
The acquisition of NEO New Oncology provides Siemens Healthineers an entry point into NGS-based genomic testing and expands its capabilities in precision medicine and companion diagnostics. Furthermore, Siemens Healthineers establishes a business prospect in the field of molecular services, with the plan to provide testing and enablement services to physicians, hospitals and laboratories, including access to the latest medical knowledge and technologies.
A press release can be found from Siemens website by following this link.
13 May, 2016
Device to release cancer cells for better analysis
A new device developed at the University of Michigan could provide a non-invasive way to monitor the progress of an advanced cancer treatment.
It can pick cancer cells out of a blood sample and let them go later, enabling further tests that can show whether the therapy is successfully ridding the patient of the most dangerous cancer cells.
Cells released into the bloodstream by tumors could be used to monitor cancer treatment, but they are very difficult to capture, accounting for roughly one in a billion cells, says Sunitha Nagrath, U-M assistant professor of chemical engineering.
Nagrath and her collaborators pioneered technologies for capturing these cells from blood samples. Their devices trapped the cells on chips made with graphene oxide, a single layer of carbon and oxygen atoms. But all analysis had to be done on the chip because the cells were firmly stuck.
"We could grow the cells on the chip or analyze them all together, but research has shown that cancer cells are not all the same," she said. "Hence, it is important to study cells individually, and our new device makes this possible."
The stem cell theory of cancer holds that relapses occur because chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not very effective at killing cancer stem cells, which can make up as much as 10 percent of a tumor. As a result, the cancer stem cells left behind are able to regrow the tumor or spread to other areas of the body.
New treatments in clinical trials attack the stem cells, but killing this smaller population does not immediately shrink the tumor. Doctors need a good way to monitor whether the cancer stem cells are on the decline. This may be possible through blood tests, but clinicians need to study captured cells individually, and that means removing them from the chip.
A press release can be found from University of Michigan website.
It can pick cancer cells out of a blood sample and let them go later, enabling further tests that can show whether the therapy is successfully ridding the patient of the most dangerous cancer cells.
Cells released into the bloodstream by tumors could be used to monitor cancer treatment, but they are very difficult to capture, accounting for roughly one in a billion cells, says Sunitha Nagrath, U-M assistant professor of chemical engineering.
Nagrath and her collaborators pioneered technologies for capturing these cells from blood samples. Their devices trapped the cells on chips made with graphene oxide, a single layer of carbon and oxygen atoms. But all analysis had to be done on the chip because the cells were firmly stuck.
"We could grow the cells on the chip or analyze them all together, but research has shown that cancer cells are not all the same," she said. "Hence, it is important to study cells individually, and our new device makes this possible."
The stem cell theory of cancer holds that relapses occur because chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not very effective at killing cancer stem cells, which can make up as much as 10 percent of a tumor. As a result, the cancer stem cells left behind are able to regrow the tumor or spread to other areas of the body.
New treatments in clinical trials attack the stem cells, but killing this smaller population does not immediately shrink the tumor. Doctors need a good way to monitor whether the cancer stem cells are on the decline. This may be possible through blood tests, but clinicians need to study captured cells individually, and that means removing them from the chip.
13 April, 2016
FDA allows the first tissue containment system for use with certain laparoscopic power morcellators
Advanced Surgical Concepts, an Irish comapny, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permitted the marketing of PneumoLiner, the first tissue containment system for use with certain laparoscopic power morcellators to isolate uterine tissue that is not suspected to contain cancer. Although the device is an effective tissue containment system, the FDA is requiring the manufacturer, Advanced Surgical Concepts, to warn patients and health care providers that PneumoLiner has not been proven to reduce the risk of spreading cancer during these procedures.
The PneumoLiner is intended to be used only in a limited patient population, including women without uterine fibroids undergoing hysterectomy and some pre-menopausal women with fibroids who want to maintain their fertility; a small number of women may find, after consultation with their doctor, that laparoscopic power morcellation is an appropriate therapeutic option compared to more invasive surgery. For these women, the device is intended to isolate and contain tissue that is considered to be non-cancerous before surgery even if that tissue is subsequently determined to be cancerous.
The device consists of a containment bag and a tube-like plunger to deliver the device into the abdominal cavity where the tissue to be removed is placed in the bag and the bag is sealed and inflated. Inflation allows for the creation of a working space around the tissue and visualization during morcellation to help prevent breakage of the containment bag by the morcellator tip or other surgical instruments. It was tested in laboratory settings to simulate actual use and worst-case scenario conditions. The containment bag was found to be impermeable to substances that were similar in molecular size to tissues, cells and body fluids, and other testing determined that the inflated bag provided adequate space for surgeons to perform morcellation with good visualization. Stress testing to evaluate the bag’s mechanical strength demonstrated that the device could withstand forces in excess of those expected to occur in actual clinical use.
Risks associated with the PneumoLiner device include dissemination of morcellated tissue, injury to surrounding tissues or organs, infections and a prolongation of the surgical procedure. The required labeling for the device must state that use of the device is limited to physicians who have successfully completed the company’s validated training program.
The PneumoLiner is intended to be used only in a limited patient population, including women without uterine fibroids undergoing hysterectomy and some pre-menopausal women with fibroids who want to maintain their fertility; a small number of women may find, after consultation with their doctor, that laparoscopic power morcellation is an appropriate therapeutic option compared to more invasive surgery. For these women, the device is intended to isolate and contain tissue that is considered to be non-cancerous before surgery even if that tissue is subsequently determined to be cancerous.
The device consists of a containment bag and a tube-like plunger to deliver the device into the abdominal cavity where the tissue to be removed is placed in the bag and the bag is sealed and inflated. Inflation allows for the creation of a working space around the tissue and visualization during morcellation to help prevent breakage of the containment bag by the morcellator tip or other surgical instruments. It was tested in laboratory settings to simulate actual use and worst-case scenario conditions. The containment bag was found to be impermeable to substances that were similar in molecular size to tissues, cells and body fluids, and other testing determined that the inflated bag provided adequate space for surgeons to perform morcellation with good visualization. Stress testing to evaluate the bag’s mechanical strength demonstrated that the device could withstand forces in excess of those expected to occur in actual clinical use.
Risks associated with the PneumoLiner device include dissemination of morcellated tissue, injury to surrounding tissues or organs, infections and a prolongation of the surgical procedure. The required labeling for the device must state that use of the device is limited to physicians who have successfully completed the company’s validated training program.
The press release can be found from Advanced Surgical Concepts by clicking here.
04 March, 2016
Opportunities for cancer diagnostics and treatment devices
It is believed that
many patients suffering from cancer could be treated if the tumor can be
detected at very early stage.
As per statistics, number of newly diagnosed cancer patients keeps growing in China, which escalates the demand of medical devices and in-vitro products such as early screening devices, diagnostic devices, bio-markers, imaging devices and radiology equipment. This also generates opportunities for medical examination centers as well as independent medical imaging centers.
 |
| Number of newly diagnosed cancer patients in China |
As per statistics, number of newly diagnosed cancer patients keeps growing in China, which escalates the demand of medical devices and in-vitro products such as early screening devices, diagnostic devices, bio-markers, imaging devices and radiology equipment. This also generates opportunities for medical examination centers as well as independent medical imaging centers.
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