Cancer Detector Boosted

Johnson & Johnson has partnered with Massachusetts General Hospital to develop and market a unique blood test for detecting cancer that could transform our treatment approaches.

Researchers claim the test can find a single cancer cell among billions of healthy ones circulating in a person’s blood. This test is expected to hit the market within the next few years.

Experts think this development has the potential to transform how tumors are treated and to quickly determine if a treatment is working. It is believed the test may potentially transform care of many types of cancer, especially breast, colon, prostate and lung cancer.

Ultimately, the test may offer another way to screen for cancer besides mammograms, colonoscopies, and other diagnostics now in use.

So how does it work? A micro-fluidics chip was designed to capture cancer cells circulating in the blood.

The test is close to clinical use because of a newly formed partnership between Massachusetts General Hospital and Veridex, a diagnostics company owned by New Jersey-based J&J.

The technology “will enable (circulating tumor cells) to be used by both oncologists as a diagnostic tool for personalizing patient care, as well as researchers to accelerate and improve the process of drug discovery and development,’’ the company says.

A prototype, developed by Mehmet Toner and collaborators at MGH, consists of a business-card-size silicon chip dotted with tens of thousands of microscopic posts.

Each post is coated with a molecule which binds to a protein unique to cells from a specific type of tumor, such as prostate, pancreatic or breast cancer. As blood flows through the chip, tumor cells stick to the posts.

In 2007, the research team first demonstrated that the chip can capture these rare cells, which make up just one in a billion cells in a blood sample. This is high enough to analyze them for molecular markers.

The goal is to use the device to tailor cancer treatments to individual patients by monitoring cell counts and by identifying the molecular attributes of an individual’s cancer.

For example, specific markers can highlight a more aggressive form of cancer or a tumor that will respond to specific cancer drugs, while genetic changes in the tumor might prompt a treatment change.

MGH and four other research institutions have received a $15 million grant from the Stand Up To Cancer organization to test the prototype. But the technology is expensive and complicated to use. Each chip costs about $500, according to The Boston Globe.

“We’re limited by our ability to make it fast, easy, cheap, and something that could be done on a global scale,’’ says Dr. Daniel Haber, director of MGH Cancer Center. “Our goal is to build together a third-generation technology … that would be so easy to use and so standard, it wouldn’t have to be a research tool.’’

WMB believes, as the researchers do, that this test could ultimately evolve to become an inexpensive, noninvasive complement to the CT scans and tissue biopsies which oncologists traditionally use to characterize tumors, many times too late.

For example, regular blood tests assessing tumor cell count might be used to determine if a particular treatment is effective.

Toner’s group recently developed a new version of the chip that can capture even more cells.

The inner surface of the device has a herringbone design which generates a vortex in the blood flowing through it, allowing the cells to be in greater contact with the antibodies on the chip's surface.

The chip could detect an isolated cluster of tumor cells, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It may help understand the cancer’s ability to spread, or metastasize, from its original birthplace.

While the true potential of the J&J blood test to detect cancer is not yet known, it’s safe to say better treatments should increase the chances for better outcomes for those with the disease.

This post is by TechMan, WMB co-author. Please share this post.

Battling Breast Cancer Now

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, but there is reason for hope with an estimated 2.5 million breast cancer survivors today in the United States. This May marks the 25th consecutive year for the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

An estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed among women in this country in 2010, according to the American Cancer Society. About 5 percent of all breast cancer patients die each year. Breast cancer is second only to lung cancer in mortality for women.

Breast cancer is a malignant tumor that grows in one or both breasts. The cancer usually develops in the ducts or lobules which are also known as the milk-producing areas of the breast, according to Wikipedia. African-American women have a slightly lower incidence of breast cancer after age 40; Caucasian women have a slightly higher incidence rate of breast cancer before age 40. But African-American women are more likely to die from breast cancer independent of age.

Breast cancer is much less common in males. The disease is about 100 times more common among women. ACS reports about 1,910 new cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed in the United States last year.

There are two main categories of breast cancer – noninvasive cancers (“carcinoma in situ”) and invasive cancers. Noninvasive breast cancers are confined in the ducts or lobules and they do not spread to surrounding tissues. There are two types of noninvasive breast cancers: ductal carcinoma in situ (referred to as DCIS) and lobular carcinoma in situ (referred to as LCIS).

Hormones found in a woman’s body, such as estrogen and progesterone, generally play a role in the development of breast cancer. In breast cancer, estrogen results in a doubling of cancer cells every 36 hours. This growing tumor needs to increase its blood supply in order to receive more food and oxygen. Progesterone appears to cause stromal cells (i.e. the women’s own cells send out signals for more blood to supply the oxygen and nutrients), Dr. V. Craig Jordan, vice president and scientific director for the medical science division at Fox Chase Center in Philadelphia, told The New York Times in 2006.

Invasive or infiltrating breast cancers penetrate through normal breast tissue and invade surrounding areas. They are more serious than noninvasive cancers because they can spread to other parts of the body such as the bones, liver, lungs and brain.

There are several kinds of invasive breast cancers. The most common type is invasive ductal carcinoma, which appears in the ducts and accounts for about 80 percent of all breast cancer cases. There are differences in the various types of invasive breast cancer, but the treatments are similar for all types.

Five Types of Standard Treatment

The following standard treatments are recommended by the ACS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Cancer Institute.

Surgery

Most patients with breast cancer have surgery to remove the cancer from the breast. Some of the lymph nodes under the arm are usually taken out via a biopsy and examined under the microscope to determine if they are cancerous. The types of surgery are classified into lumpectomy, partial mastectomy, total mastectomy, modified radical mastectomy, and radical mastectomy.

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy is a cancer treatment that uses high-energy X-rays or other types of radiation to kill cancer cells. The way the radiation therapy is given depends on the type and stage of the cancer being treated.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is a cancer treatment that uses drugs to prevent the growth of cancer cells. This is accomplished either by killing them or from preventing them from dividing. When chemotherapy is taken by mouth or injected into a vein or muscle, the drugs enter the bloodstream and can reach the cancer cells throughout the body.

Hormone Therapy

Hormone therapy is a cancer treatment that removes hormones or blocks their action and stops cancer cells from growing. Hormones are substances produced by glands in the body and circulated into the bloodstream. Some hormones can cause certain cancers to grow.

Targeted Therapy

Specific cancer cells are destroyed without harming normal cells. Monoclonal antibodies and tyrosine kinase inhibitors are two types of therapies currently under study.

CLINICAL TRIALS and NEW TREATMENTS

Information about clinical trials is available from the National Cancer Institute.

Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy Followed by Surgery

Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the removal of the sentinel lymph node during surgery. The sentinel lymph node is the first node to receive lymphatic drainage from a tumor. It is the first lymph node the cancer is likely to spread to from the tumor.
A radioactive substance or blue dye is injected near the tumor. The substance or dye flows through the lymph ducts to the lymph nodes. The first lymph node to receive the substance or dye is removed.

High-Dose Chemotherapy and Stem Cell Transplant

High-dose chemotherapy with stem cell transplant is a way of giving high doses of chemotherapy and replacing blood-forming cells destroyed by the cancer treatment. Stem cells (immature blood cells) are removed from the blood or bone marrow from the patient or a donor and are frozen and stored.

After chemotherapy is completed, the stored stem cells are thawed and given back to the patient by infusion. These reinfused stem cells grow into and restore the body’s blood cells. For some patients, taking part in a clinical trial may be their best treatment choice. Clinical trials are part of cancer research process and are conducted to find out if the cancer treatments are safe and effective compared to standard treatment.

Many of today’s standard treatments are based on earlier clinical trials. As such, patients who take part in a clinical trial may receive the standard treatment or be among the first to try a new treatment.

Of course, patients who take part in clinical trials help pave the way for new patients. Even when clinical trials don’t solve existing questions, they often can lead to new discoveries and help move research forward.

This post is courtesy of TechMan who writes about trends, ideas and issues affecting business, industry and technology.