Hunting for metastases
The new implant will serve as a trap for cancer cells
Daria Zagorskaya, Vesti One of the main problems in oncology is the spread of the disease to other organs or metastasis, which can begin even before the primary focus is detected.
This process is the most common cause of death from cancer and in most cases is detected too late.
According to many experts, one of the solutions to the problem lies in the timely detection of so-called circulating tumor cells (CCCs), which spread the disease throughout the body. But these cells are very difficult to detect, because they travel in very small quantities and can wander in search of a new organ-a haven for a long time.
A team of researchers led by Professor Lonnie Shea from the University of Michigan has proposed a new method for detecting CSCs. Scientists have developed an implant in the form of a disk with a diameter of about 5 millimeters from a biodegradable inert porous material that is already used in medical devices for various purposes.
The implant is a trap for the CSC, the bait in which are signaling molecules – chemokine CCL22. Their main function is to control cell migration. Chemokine stimulates the migration of certain immune cells inside the implant, and those encourage cancer cells to follow their example.
The devices were implanted under the skin of mice with breast cancer. Each rodent had 2 implants. After 2 weeks, the researchers found circulating tumor cells in the devices that were still in the animals' bodies.
Detection became possible thanks to optical coherence tomography, which, in fact, is an analogue of ultrasound, using optical radiation of the near infrared range. The method makes it possible to detect the compaction of the cell structure, which is a distinctive feature of a malignant tumor.
The authors of the work note that the implant cannot collect enough cells to be considered anti-cancer therapy. Nevertheless, it is an excellent way to diagnose metastasis early.
In addition, the collected cells can become a material for the selection of effective individual anti-cancer therapy.
Other researchers are also working on various CSC traps, but their achievements so far are limited to capturing cancer cells of one type. Dr. Shi and his team consider the advantage of their device to be its versatility, namely the ability to catch different types of cells.
But at the moment, in their article published in the journal Nature Communications (Azarin et al., In vivo capture and label-free detection of early metastatic cells, researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of the implant only in capturing breast cancer cells. In addition, the authors received positive results for another type of disease, but these data have not yet been published.
Dr. Shi is confident that the adaptation of the implant for humans will be successful, since the mechanisms of infection of organs in mice and humans are very similar. The main task will be to set up a scanner to determine the contents of the implant, since human skin is thicker than that of rodents. The scientist believes that clinical trials on volunteers will begin in the coming years.
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11.09.2015