He cancer diagnosis early treatment is almost as important as getting new treatments. For this reason, it is also the goal of scientists who are looking for new options that effective, cheap and least invasive for patients. There are few requirements, but getting them to converge is difficult, which is why what the team of scientists has just achieved is so interesting. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It’s about Analysis of urine He doesn’t just diagnose cancer. It can also provide data on the type of tumor, its progression status, and even the presence of metastases.
At the moment it is only tested in mice, so it is too early to talk about its effectiveness in humans. However, the good results obtained with rodents are encouraging.
If this cancer diagnostic tool were used on humans, patients themselves could make monitoring your illness from home. In addition, healthcare professionals will have more information to prescribe specific treatments as soon as possible. Without a doubt, this would be an excellent weapon in the arsenal of fighting cancer.
How does this method of diagnosing cancer work?
This new cancer diagnostic tool is based on a nanoparticle developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nanoparticles are particles with their three dimensions. less than 100 nanometers. Due to their small size, they are very useful in biomedicine, since they can enter the bloodstream and perform many functions. That is what they are doing in this case, acting as a bloodhound in search of cancer.
To do this, the nanoparticles are coated proteins marked by a number of DNA sequences. As soon as they are ready, they are injected into the body of patients, where they begin to search for tumor cells. If they find them, they use proteins called enzymeswhich act like molecular scissors, cutting the nanoparticles and releasing one of those proteins that was on its surface. Once these proteins are released, excreted in the urineand this is where cancer diagnosis begins.
Patients wear a device similar to pregnancy test, which is able to detect the presence in the urine of the protein that has been excised from the nanoparticles. Its presence will mean that the cancer has been detected. But, in addition, since these proteins were associated with DNA sequences, the released sequence reads like a barcodewhich can give more information about the type of tumor and its development.
Simple urinalysis
Mice have been tested introduction of nanoparticles. However, they can be administered orally to humans, via an inhaler or even topically, with creams. This would make cancer diagnosis minimally invasive, so patients could be seen at home themselves.
In addition, the scientists responsible for the study believe that their invention can help democratizing cancer diagnosiswhich makes it more accessible to everyone.
And that is not all. They also believe that by changing selected proteins and DNA sequences, they could be used to diagnose other diseases, such as some infectious pathologies.
There is still a lot to be explored in this regard, but they seem to be on the right track.
Source: Hiper Textual
