Cancer Cells Are Being Light Up for Easier Removal

The team of scientists from Massachusetts that developed the technique said the research will be complete in 2017.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – The Massachusetts Technology Institute, the Medical Center at Duke’s University and the General Hospital of Massachusetts declared that in latest trials cancer cells are being light up for easier removal. This is possible thanks to a new imaging method that was developed by the researchers from the institutions mentioned above.

The new approach involves using a solution called LUMO15, a substance containing proteases designed specifically to illuminate cancer-affected areas in the body. The entire process has been tested only on laboratory animals, for the moment. Human trials consisted only in the injecting of the LUMO15 substance into 15 patients affected by cancer. Results were positive and encouraging.

The technique is still experimental, fully human trials are not being yet approved. At the moment, all that the researchers did, regarding the human testing, was to inject the substance into the 15 volunteers to see if it works and to analyze the possible side-effects. For the moment, they did not encounter any.

The LUMO15 developed by the researchers from the Massachusetts institutions is very important in the struggle against cancer. When operating on a person that has cancer, there are great chances that the surgeon misses some cells or small tumors due to the lack of visibility.

Here is where the substance comes in handy. When the cancerous cells are better differentiated that the normal healthy tissue, they are easier to spot, and therefore, removed. This technique could make a great difference for patients with micro tumors that are very hard to locate and remove.

It could mean much greater odds at a complete recovery. It could also make one cancer removal surgery to be the only cancer removal surgery that a patient undergoes because second surgeries are often needed when the cancer formations are well hidden.

The researchers from Massachusetts that worked on this technique say it will have a long road filled with test trials and, hopefully very little, failures before it could even be taken into consideration for approval. They have estimated that sometime around 2017 the research will be complete.

At this moment, the LUMO15 was tested on 15 cancer patients. They suffered from either breast cancer, or melanoma developed on the soft tissue. Further tests will be made on a sample of 50 more patients that suffer from the disorder. Expectations are high from patients and surgeons around the world.

Image source: www.wikimedia.org

Bio
Latest Posts

Tara Hamilton

Tara has graduated from the University of Oregon, with bachelors degree in Spanish Literature in 2010. She lived in Miami for one year and travelled extensively before settling down in El Paso.