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Today, the majority of cancers are detected on the macroscopic level, when the tumor is already composed of millions of cancer cells and the disease is starting to advance into a more mature phase. But what if we could diagnose cancer before it took hold- while it was still only affecting a few localized cells? It would be like putting a fire out while it was still just a few sparks versus after having already caught on and spread to many areas of the house. An international team of researchers, led by ICFO- Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels, announce the successful development of a "lab-on-a-chip" platform capable of detecting protein cancer markers in the blood using the very latest advances in plasmonics, nano-fabrication, microfluids and surface chemistry. The device is able to detect very low concentrations of protein cancer markers in blood, enabling diagnoses of the disease in its earliest stages. The detection of cancer in its very early stages is seen as key to the successful diagnosis and treatment of this disease.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday May 19 2014, @07:30PM
reading just the first article they cite (Ehmann R, Boedeker E, Friedrich U,et al. Canine scent detection in
the diagnosis of lung cancer: revisiting a puzzling phenomenon. Eur Respir J 2012; 39: 669–676) , raises some questions about their methodology.
I find it hard to ignore the fact that Group A (healthy) is Age 46.2+/- 14.0 and B(lung cancer) is Age 63.6+/-10.3.
Statistically, they have not controlled for the age of the patients. This undermines their conclusions.
I understand how compelling the idea is to have animals diagnose our diseases, but without the objective molecular knowledge of what chemical compound they are detecting, it is of limited use. Worse, it might mislead patients into avoiding treatment, for a negative reaction to an animal.
(Score: 1) by ankh on Monday May 26 2014, @05:03PM
see also: http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/39/3/511.short [ersjournals.com]
"Both our paper [6] and that of Ehmann et al. [1], in the current issue of the European Respiratory Journal, used an independent validation phase in which dogs were able to distinguish lung cancer patient breath samples from controls, using samples from individuals not previously encountered in their training."