Slashdot Mirror
Ultrasound Technique Provides a New Radiation Free Way To Visualize Tumors
FirephoxRising writes "Traditionally ultrasound has seen limited use in cancer treatment due to clarity and resolution issues. But researchers at the UNC School of Medicine have overcome this limitation by combining ultrasound with a contrast agent composed of tiny bubbles that pair with an antibody that many cancer cells produce at higher levels than do normal cells. 'The SFRP2-moleculary targeted contrast agent showed specific visualization of the tumor vasculature,' said Klauber-DeMore. 'In contrast, there was no visualization of normal blood vessels. This suggests that the contrast agent may help distinguish malignant from benign masses found on imaging.'"
With tumors surely more traditional X-rays could only help matters (radiotherapy-lite)
Unfortunately the ultrasonics cause a Karman vortex street, which has been known to induce panic, particularly in snow hikers.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Great, now the US is only a decade behind the rest of the world who weren't stopped from looking at contrast agents by the FDA.
I think you got mixed up. This isn't your family's Facebook wall, it's the comments section of slashdot.
So, if this contrast agent attaches to cancer cells more than normal ones, could it be used to deliver targeted death to the cancer cells?
This guy is mad
That happens sometimes when your horse loses interest in you....
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Tumors don't often produce antibodies. The bubbles associate with an antibody that is targeted to an antigen produced by the tumor.
Microbubbles have been used both experimentally and commercially as a contrast-enhancing agent in ultrasound imaging for at least twenty years.
Coupling affinity probes (like antibodies) to microbubbles in order to increase their specificity has been done for more than a decade. Extensive work has been done in tissue and animal models. (The study in the Slashdot story is just another mouse study.)
Unlike the study promoted here, there are a number of published reports - as well as clinical trials - involving use of these probe-coupled microbubbles in real human beings to study real people with real diseases. (See for example this 2012 review.) It's nice that UNC is studying this stuff and it's good to see the number of targets for this technique being increased...but breathless press releases aside, this particular study isn't really cutting-edge.
~Idarubicin
Yes, we've come a long way in cancer treatment, and some ways in cancer detection. Problem is that there are some cancers that start very small, and move faster than the annual physical. The bean counters are standing in the way of the ultrasounds that can in fact see small tumors sooner than CT. The rationale is that (2) it costs a lot to screen false positives and (2) it makes people worry more. I have news for you - after losing two immediate family members way too soon to cancers that were only discovered once the symptoms got dangerous, something needs to change. Too often we're not finding cancer when it starts but rather when it displaces and entire organ or produces blood. I'll take 6 months of worrying and a middling increase in cost to find out it it was nothing over ten or 50 years of death.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Oh definitely! This still leaves the ultrasound creating bubbles, cooking tissue, emitters being inserted in nasty places... and the resolution is nothing compared to a PET scan for detection.
So, if this contrast agent attaches to cancer cells more than normal ones, could it be used to deliver targeted death to the cancer cells?
For this, they would have to use hiney bubbles.
Oh definitely! This still leaves the ultrasound creating bubbles, cooking tissue, emitters being inserted in nasty places... and the resolution is nothing compared to a PET scan for detection.
Okay, it's pretty obvious that you don't know how the technology works either.
The sensitivity of PET scanning may be better under some circumstances and for some organs and tissues; it's early days for affinity-tagged microbubble contrast in ultrasound, whereas PET is an older, more mature technology. PET is also quite good for scanning large volumes. On the other hand, its spatial resolution is crap compared to virtually any other imaging modality (save for its poor cousin SPECT)--including run-of-the-mill ultrasound. PET scanning requires exposure to a goodly bit of ionizing radiation; ultrasound is one of the few imaging modalities that does not.
Under anything like normal conditions (with or without microbubble contrast), ultrasound imaging does not create bubbles or cause significant heating of tissue. The microbubbles discussed here are exogenous and introduced intravenously (for most types of studies); once in the body they tend to break down within a few tens of minutes. The microbubbles are typically tens of microns in size and are carried harmlessly through the circulatory system. Gas from burst bubbles escapes readily through the lungs.
You use PET scanning to look for distant metastases throughout the body, and a positive PET signal indicates the need for further investigation rather than representing a firm diagnosis by itself. Ultrasound with affinity-tagged microbubbles is used to interrogate a (suspected) primary tumour and the immediately surrounding tissue; it's a different clinical problem entirely.
As a side bonus, ultrasound is probably hands-down the cheapest imaging modality available to clinicians--which means that instruments are plentiful and fast access is readily available even to patients who don't happen to live near a major hospital's radiology department.
~Idarubicin
There are several ultrasound machine makers that create very good images, and not necessarily the most expensive machines either. One key advantage also is that even with less resolution you get real time images. Ultrasound is very safe, and even then is still regulated with very strict power controls. There is no "cooked tissue".
Without a hyphen, the story is much more interesting. It could say:
Ultrasound Technique Provides a New Radiation
Free Way To Visualize Tumors
Very interesting.
I am so sick and tired of reading about diagnostic tools for cancer being treated as an advancement.
For half a century patients have been able to get pretty pictures of their tumors and they end up dying anyway.
The one thing many of these new "advancements" seem to have is adding on to the bill, but not really treating to the patient.
Who cares about 3D pictures of tumors, after 50+ years of cancer diagnostic pics address the problem already.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
ultra sound ablative surgery: ex. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... .
Essentially you zap with low power to see where you are aiming, then high power to vibrate/boil the tissue you wish to destroy. The beauty of it is compared to most radiotherapy (proton might be better but is relatively rare and expensive) the distribution of normal to target dose is much better.