So as not to cut off the excess
This pen identifies a cancerous tumor in 10 seconds
In the USA, a device has been developed that, when touching tissue, evaluates the concentration of substances in the intercellular space and, based on this, distinguishes a healthy area from a tumor one. The procedure does not damage the tissue and takes no more than 10 seconds.
Photo: Vivian Abagiu/Univ. of Texas at Austin
One of the main problems of modern oncological surgery is to determine where the tumor border passes. "When you talk to cancer patients after surgery, one of the first phrases that many say is, "I hope the surgeon cut out the tumor entirely,"" the press service of the University of Texas at Austin quotes Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, the lead author of the study. However, if you play it safe and remove more tissue, then there is a chance to damage a healthy part of the organ. And the less it remains, the higher the risk of side effects, such as nerve damage in patients with breast cancer.
The modern diagnosis of cancer during surgery consists in the examination of frozen tissue sections by a pathologist. The procedure takes about half an hour, and it is long enough for an infection to develop in the patient's body during this time or some other negative consequences of anesthesia to affect. In addition, in some cases, even a specialist cannot determine with high accuracy whether the tissue is cancerous or healthy.
A group of scientists led by Eberlin created a device for rapid diagnostics during surgery. His work looks like this: the surgeon holds a pen, which he applies for a few seconds to the examined tissue, and presses the pedal under the table. A drop of liquid flows out of the handle, into which substances fall from the surface of the fabric, then the device sucks the drop back. Through the connecting tube, substances enter the mass spectrometer, which measures their masses. Finally, the interface built into it displays a diagram of the distribution of these masses and, analyzing it, makes a diagnosis. The developers named their device MasSpec Pen (since its operation is based on mass spectrometry).
Image: Univ. of Texas at Austin
The physiology of a cancer cell is very different from a healthy one, therefore, other substances accumulate in the intercellular space of the tumor compared to healthy tissue. To train the program to distinguish these sets of substances, Eberlin and colleagues analyzed 253 human tissue samples, among which were samples of breast, lung, ovarian and thyroid cancer. It turned out that their mass distribution diagrams differ significantly, and as a result of such training, MasSpec Pen was able to make diagnoses with an accuracy of more than 96%. In addition, scientists have verified that the device detects cancer in live mice without affecting healthy tissue and the body itself.
The researchers believe that the new device will make it possible to effectively determine the border of the tumor during operations, and hope for its early introduction into clinical practice.
The study is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
08.09.2017