Tumor Cell Technology

[Guest guest]

Using next-generation Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) technology to capture, count

and characterize circulating tumor cells in patients' blood, and

and Massachusetts General Hospital hope to equip doctors with a more advanced

non-invasive way to find out from a few cells how much a cancer has spread,

personalize treatment for patients, and monitor their progress.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cells that have come away from a primary

tumor, are circulating in the bloodstream, and have the potential to seed

secondary tumors in another part of the body.

Veridex, a and company, announced the new partnership will also

involve Ortho Biotech Oncology Research & Development (ORD), a unit of &

Pharmaceutical Research & Development that has expertise in oncology

therapeutics, biomarkers and companion diagnostics.

Veridex already markets the first FDA-approved CTC test, the CellSearch blood

test, launched in 2004.

The company says that " CTCs are proven to be an independent predictor of Overall

Survival (OS) and Progression Free Survival (PFS) " , and that " ... monitoring of

CTCs can indicate a significant change in prognosis as early as after the first

treatment cycle and at each step of the way " .

By partnering with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who bring expertise in

new CTC technologies, Veridex hope the collaboration will be able to exploit the

latest technological, biological and clinical innovations to produce a more

advanced diagnostic tool that oncologists can use for personalizing patient

care, and a more advanced investigative tool that researchers and developers can

use to speed up and improve the discovery and development of new drugs.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/212627.php

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University of Arizona researchers may have found a way to deliver

chemotherapeutic drugs to cancer tissues in controlled doses without harming

healthy body cells. If successful, the invention of gold-coated liposomes could

make chemotherapy more effective to destroy cancer cells and alleviate the

harmful side effects that can result from the treatment.

The invention by Marek Romanowski, an associate professor of biomedical

engineering in the UA College of Engineering and a member of the BIO5 Institute

and the Arizona Cancer Center, and his lab team doesn't have a silver lining.

Better: It has a lining of gold. The secret to non-invasively controlling the

release of chemotherapeutic drugs lies in nano-scale capsules made of lipids and

coated with a fine layer of gold.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/212471.php

FYI,

Lottie Duthu