New device can detect cancer in just a drop of blood

New device can detect cancer in just a drop of blood

Some types of cancer, such as ovarian cancer, tend to remain undetected until they are too advanced for treatment to be effective. Now, an innovative tool may be able to detect cancer easily, quickly, and in minuscule amounts of blood.

The device, which is called a "3-D-nano patterned microfluidic chip," could successfully detect cancer markers in the tiniest drop of blood or in a component of the blood called plasma.In a bid to find a simple, effective way of identifying hard-to-diagnose cancer researchers from the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence and the KU Cancer Center and KU Medical Center in Kansas City have now developed an ultra sensitive cancer-detecting device.

Lead author Yong Zeng, an associate professor of chemistry at KU, and his team describe how the novel tool works in a paper that the journalNature Biomedical Engineering has published.

This device, the scientists explain, identifies and diagnoses cancer by "filtering" for exosomes, which are tiny vesicles that some eukaryotic cells produce.

In the case of cancer cells, exosomes contain biological information that can direct tumor growth and spread.

"Historically, people thought exosomes were like 'trash bags' that cells could use to dump unwanted cellular contents," Zeng explains. "But, in the past decade," he adds, "scientists realized they were quite useful for sending messages to recipient cells and communicating molecular information important in many biological functions.