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Prototype Scanner Detects Cancer In Under 1 Hour
Ian Lamont writes "Researchers at Stanford say they have developed a blood scanner that can search for cancer-associated proteins in a blood sample and returns results in less than an hour. The device looks in a blood sample for cancerous proteins, and attempts to match them up with complementary proteins using chips based on magnetic nanotechnology. One of the researchers says the device could potentially help doctors identify lung cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer at an early stage. The device still has to undergo clinical testing and trials before it can win regulatory approval."
Meanwhile.... 14 years later...
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Doctor: Well, we better discuss treatment now for your testicular cancer. I recommend hormone therapy. Man: Are there any side-effects? Doctor: A few. You will have a loss of potency. You might get some hot flashes. And when lost, you will have an inexplicable urge to ask for directions. http://www.phoenix5.org/humor/HumorRVYjokes.html
It's all fun and games till someone divides by 0. Then it's hilarious.
Any doctors here?
Isn't this only useful if the cancer is already developed to the point where it is spilling cancer cells into your blood?
I don't see this being useful for detecting breast, brain, foot or butt tumors?
Isn't this only useful if the cancer is already developed to the point where it is spilling cancer cells into your blood?
IANAD but afaik, first the cancer cell must release itself from its primary tumor, and make its way through the walls of the blood vessel. Even once in the blood, it's thought that of many thousands and thousands of cancer cells that make their way through the unlikely trip into the bloodstream, only one or two will probably form a metastasis.
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Not only did I invent a device which would correctly diagnose cancer 99.999% of the time, not only did it work in only half an hour, it also didn't involve any of this expensive magnetic nanotechnology la-dee-dah. Plus the device was so ridiculously simple anybody could use it, which you'll see once I describe the device itself.
Basically it's a big box, kinda like a front-loading washing machine. In front of the box is the scanning aperture. On top of the box is a single button labeled "Detect Cancer". You stand in front of the scanning aperture, and you hit the button. Over the next half hour, the box scans you with very high levels of x-rays. Once the scanning was done the only other feature on the top of the box, a green LED with a label that says "Cancer Detected", would light up.
You see, so simple a child could use it! I should know, too, because I had some try it out. But those bastards at the FDA brushed me off, even threatening me if I continued performing clinical trials! Even after I showed them it had the same accuracy detecting radiation burns and radiation sickness! But what do you expect from bureaucrats? More concerned with their "rules" and "regulations" than helping people. I wouldn't be surprised if this new one gets a pass because being hard to build and complicated to use they can regulate the hell out of it, even if it is inferior. :(
The enemies of Democracy are
How does this compare to traditional tests? One hour is great and all, but how long to today's tests take to return results?
...or it's free?
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
This technology brought to you by Lenscrafters.
The article points to PNAS (proceeding of national academy of sciences) ... but ... there's no article there.
Dude says he can detect cancer in blood but other dudes been saying that for years.
Often this research is wrong or utterly useless. It might be good advertising for a startup (which this appears to be) and may get some venture cap; but there's a new "we have an early cancer test" claim every few months.
So far all we have is a business journalist talking up a start up. When it's reproduced independently, then we can get excited.
Great news. I need new glasses and it would be nice not to have to make a separate trip.
You can use your Deterministic Oncological Generating box ;^)
or perhaps take advantage of another type of dog...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html
Apparently this more common type of dog can be trained to smell certain types of existing cancer (instead of deteriministically generating them) ;^)
1. Build a detector that causes cancer in under thirty minutes.
2. ???
3. Profit!!
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
I'm reading this article in the middle of my MCB132: Cancer Biology class at Berkeley. Looks like Stanford is getting another bio Nobel prize....oh well, Cal pwns them in Chemistry and Physics prizes.
This isn't just some professor making an interesting invention and then having it sit on the shelves forever. It's coming out of the Stanford Genome Technology Center. That place is a factory for startups. They run it much more like a company than an academic lab, and as soon as they get something they like, they know how to develop it and sell it. Every now and then, I think back and wonder what would have happened if I had joined that group knowing now that academia isn't suited for me.
As far as i understood detecting very slight amounts of a
particular protein also has many other uses besides
detection of cancer proteins in a clinical environment.
The whole thing already looks like a ready to use device
in the picture so i think it's pretty close
to actual applications, even if it's not approved for clinical use.
However, the hour time frame is not the real story here - it's the ability to combine all of this screening in the first place.
Having lost a grandmother, aunt, and coworker to ovarian cancer, I have a slightly different perspective on this. Ovarian cancer is just extremely difficult to accurately discover in time to treat effectively. There are tests that can be done to test for it, but the rate of false positives and negatives really negate their usefulness. Usually by the time the cancer is discovered, it is in too late of a stage and a woman's chances for survival are not very good.
I will be interested to see how accurate the results of this scanner's test are. If it enables more reliable early detection of ovarian cancer, we're possibly talking the ability to give thousands of women a fighting chance.
So combining the ability to test for multiple cancers is nice, but if it's merely an accurate test for something that so far has been virtually undetectable until it's too late, that's good enough for me.
I'm aware that this is years down the road, but since right now the best they can do is say, "Well, you were on birth control pills for a number of years. That's a plus... I suppose we can run this test, but it gives a lot of bad results. Want that?" I think it's an excellent development.
Cars kill people every day. Do you drive? When you drive, do you speed? (You are aware the speed limits were introduced because of statistics showing reduced accident rates, yes?) People make life-and-death decisions all the time based around the fact that some must die so that others might live. They simply choose to try to ignore it as much as possible. With no easy transportation, quality of life would be much poorer. People would die sooner. People would die because they didn't get to the doctor in time. No matter what happens, you cannot make that go away.
Sure, people will die because treatments get delayed for testing. It's easy to say, with the benefit of hindsight, "we could have saved so many more if we'd just started treatment right away". But the FDA was created because the treatments were killing people too, and nobody had any idea what was safe and what wasn't. Remember the clinical trial that almost killed 3 people when the immunoreactive drug they were administered proved to be nigh-fatal? Supposing they had decided to skip the initial is-this-toxic-in-humans test and proceeded directly to large-scale trials?