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Extremely Accurate Nanotech Cancer Test Developed
Sylvestre writes "Medical News Today reports that Harvard researchers have developed an accurate test for cancer using nanotechnology. From the article: 'Harvard University researchers have found that molecular markers indicating the presence of cancer in the body are readily detected in blood scanned by special arrays of silicon nanowires -- even when these cancer markers constitute only one hundred-billionth of the protein present in a drop of blood. In addition to this exceptional accuracy and sensitivity, the minuscule devices also promise to pinpoint the exact type of cancer present with a speed not currently available to clinicians.'"
These tests are performed on a drop of blood. They don't enter the body!
"A nanowire array can test a mere pinprick of blood in just minutes, providing a nearly instantaneous scan for many different cancer markers."
They take a blood sample from the patient, and then use the nanowires to test it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I wonder when we'll be able to buy over the counter cancer tests? We're pretty much there for HIV.
We're already a society of hypochondriacs. Imagine if you could test yourself at home for every devestating disease there is.
Of course, I'm getting a ahead of myself. Early detection is the best defense. If this is as good as they say it is, it could save a LOT of lives.
How long before they make nanites that can find cancerous cells and destroy them with extreme prejudice?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Wonder if they can adapt this to be an accurate test for prion related disease like BSE (mad cow disiease). If it could be used for both humans AND other animals, the food supply could become safer.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
God promised that the cure for cancer would be discovered at Oral Roberts University! Oral even said so!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
FTFA: "The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Cancer Institute."
Of course it is funded by DARPA, the army would love to have medical advancements like that on the battlefield. When a necklace every soldier wears instantly tells the med-tech that the wound the wearer is suffering has punctured a lung or spleen or something like that.
I can also envision this kind of technology being incorporated in care-giving robots for the elderly and infirm. If you have a 'tri-corder' like medical diagnosis kit that can fit on a robot, the robot then would know what to tell the 911 operator when it called, other than "help, they've fallen and can't get up" and that makes this type of nanotech VERY cool. Talk about search and rescue... a robot finds bodies in the rubble, slaps a triage-analysis bandage on their skin and can then tell rescue workers what kind of medical treatments are necessary.... Well, I hope that is what comes of this stuff. That magic little microphone looking thing that Dr McCoy always waved around was damned cool!!
I suppose one of the real drawbacks is that drug screenings for employment might be used to cancel insurance and work contracts etc. based on ineligiblity due to pre-existing conditions and bad things like that. (uhhhh thinking of bad scifi movies now)
Still, its cool.
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While the advance of medical technology has invariably led to better health and longer lives, I have to imagine that this technology will be cost-prohibitive enough to either lack practicality or to be available to the rich.
My other sig is funny.
Micro-cancers may spontaneously occur (and perhaps regress) frequently; no one really knows. However, most cancers presumably started as micro-cancers. I fear this test will pick-up "cancers" of questionable significance. What impact will such a test have on healthcare costs, if a battery of additional diagnostic tests are used to work-up a "positive" screening test?
I have a nano cure for thirst. Nano-H2O contains nanoscopic molecules of water that will quench your thirst. Best of all, it's for sale now!
(Going on the theory that your body will always have a few cancerous cells - or at least some molecular mimicry of cancer markers - which the body's immune system can deal with so that tumors never develop.)
I suggest you read Slashdot
However, using this as a method of detecting cancer might not be so useful. The presence of various markers in the blood is probably normal. What you want to know, is whether or not these markers are present on cells when they should be absent. They claim to be able to detect PICOgrams/mL of a specific protein in the blood. Unfortunately, all males have PSA in their blood and it's the amount that's important, not its presence. That's just for prostate cancer. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that we don't know enough about most cancers for us to know what to detect to be useful.
I can definitely see this as a useful tool for detecting hazardous chemicals and biologicals agents and scientists are always looking for more sensitive instruments. I think that's why the article appeared in Nature Biotechnology and not Nature. Still way impressive, though.
Too bad when people go to be checked for cancer, they usually suffer from the symptoms. The cancer at that stage is already big, and often spread around multiple organs..
Indeed, and yet one can't help but wonder if this wouldn't be integrable to nanochips implanted in one's body to check one's body's evolution in real time.
Some cancers are hard to detect and evolve extremely fast, once the first symptoms show themselves is already too late for the man to have any chance of survival. Having the ability to track cancer's birth and evolution in real time would prove extremely valuable to both patients and medical organisms...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Oh great! Not only has my Nano been cursed with a delicate screen that invites scratches, now it seems it's capable of succumbing to cancer as well.
"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch--hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into--some fearful, devastating scourge, I know--and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever--read the symptoms--discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it--wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance--found, as I expected, that I had that too,--began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically--read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Currently, testing for tumor markers is not all that slow--it only takes a couple of hours if you have your blood drawn at the same location that runs the tests. However, each marker you want to test for requires that another vial of blood be taken and costs around $100. Getting the results back in 5 minutes is relatively unimportant, but being able to test for say 50 tumor markers with only 1 blood sample and one low price would be really valuable even if it took *longer* than current methods. That way, you would just check for all the most common markers for your gender/race every time you went in for a physical. Or if you were in an at-risk category, maybe more often.
I was actually curious. :P
30 years later...
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More than likely we all have a few cancerous cells in our bodies right now. The point is that they don't bloom to full-on cancer, they get dispatched by the immune system.
Will this extremely accurate test be able to tell between unchecked cancer cells and those few cells which the body would take care off naturally? Or are we all going to turn into cancer patients ?