In today's fast technical World, tumor cells are not only sought out by Biomedical research, but electronic techniques are fast approaching the stage where special software-controlled microchips analyse tumor cells from blood of patients with solid tumors.
A research team from Cancer Center, Massachusetts General, led by Dr.Daniel Haber, MD. Phd. says circulating tumor cells (CTC) are located in a fragile atmosphere and are scarce in the blood, accounting for one in a million cells of a typical cancer blood sample. Being very hard to detect in a patient's blood, a newly developed chip offers non-evasive monitoring of patients with solid tumors.
Research has shown CTC chip will identify genetic changes in blood samples of patients likely to benefit from recommended treatments from those not likely to benefit. A suprise to researchers was to find the genetic make-up of tumors changed continuously during treatment.
A spokesman for American Cancer Society said this new research will play a big role for new cancer treatments. "A major problem is that we are still using a definition of cancer established in early 1800's. A new 21st. century definition will examine genetics of a tumor to establish path of mutation or cause of cell death" he concluded.
Acknowledgment New England Journal of Medicine.
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