Cancer Breakthrough Allows Scientists to Track Cancer Cell Movement in Real-Time
London, United Kingdom; Billings, Montana - In an unprecedented report published in Physical Biology by IOP Publishing on February 3, cancer researchers found that with a new testing system, the movement of cancer cells in the bloodstream can be tracked with real-time precision.
Essentially, researchers were able to follow free-flowing cancer cells moving about the body in patients with prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers.
Unlike other similar procedures, the results from this study allowed researchers to track more circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in more patients for greater accuracy.
The results push the boundaries of cancer research into a previously unknown area: exactly how cancer tumors move from part of the body to another while allowing researchers to focus more on providing targeted treatment in patients rather than experimenting on non-human specimens.
Researchers injected a specialized dye into patients that travels through the bloodstream and that is attracted to the circulating tumor cells. Once attached to these cells, the florescent compound in the dye lights up, making it easier for researchers to look at.
Though this improved technology is still in its infancy, only having completed one clinical study involving prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers, the hope is that this procedure will be equally effective for other, more challenging cancers.
Earlier versions of this procedure have been tested on cancers like mesothelioma. Linked to prolonged asbestos exposure, all forms of mesothelioma have a poor prognosis, where patients are often diagnosed well after the cancer metastasized. What this newly published study points to is the hope that with cancers like mesothelioma, monitoring florescent CTCs will help researchers curb the spread of the cancer as it moves through the body.
In a 2011 study, studying free-flowing CTCs in mesothelioma patients helped researchers determine the success of particular treatments that combat formed tumors.
“In the future, our fluid biopsy can effectively become the companion to the patient for life. If we can assess the disease in real time, we can make quantitative treatment decisions in real time. These decisions include predictive decisions about therapeutic response, diagnostic decisions and prognostic decisions about outcome,” said Professor Peter Kuhn, the senior technology author of the study published in Physical Biology.
