ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A technique that lets researchers monitor single cancer cells in real time as they float in liquid could help doctors study the breakaway tumor cells that cause metastasis. Metastasis is the process of the disease spreading through the body.
The approach, developed at the University of Michigan, could also pave the way for new types of targeted therapies that go beyond personalized medicine, researchers say.
Remy Elbez, a doctoral student in applied physics, takes a sample of a solution that contains magnetized cervical cancer cells. He will place several drops of the solution in a special magnetic field. Then, after placing the whole apparatus under a microscope, he can watch the cells spin on a screen and determine their shape and status from their rotation rates. This new technique could help doctors understand the process of cancer metastasis. Photo by Nicole Casal Moore”We’re looking toward individualized treatment, not just to the person, but to the cell,” said Remy Elbez, a doctoral student in applied physics. He is a co-author of a paper on the work published Dec. 13 in PLoS ONE.
In recent years, researchers have come to understand that not all cells in a cancerous tumor share the same genetic code. This means some are more difficult to kill than others. And techniques that enable single-cell study are in demand. Approaches that process many cells at once aren’t as useful for researchers who want to look, for example, at a small number of cells that a particular cancer drug left alive.
One particularly dangerous type of cancer cell that scientists want to know more about is the circulating tumor cell. These cells have separated from the original tumor and set off in the bloodstream to invade distant tissues. Scientists know that they’re different from the cells that stay put. They don’t divide rapidly, for example. At the same time, they’re difficult to study for several reasons. They’re hard to find because they only make up less than one in a trillion blood cells. And they operate in motion, so tamping them down to a Petri dish doesn’t reveal their true nature.
U-M BME faculty member Daryl Kipke with U-M neurosurgeon Parag Patil are featured in an article titled “An oboe for the brain” in Michigan Today. The article chronicles a Parkinson’s patient who is treated using Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a technology researched at U-M BME and pioneered at Kipke’s U-M supported start-up NeuroNexus Technologies, Inc. Click the link above to read the full article.
A paper by U-M BME professor Xudong (Sherman) Fan and his Ph.D student Yuze Sun titled “Distinguishing DNA via analog-to-digital like conversion using optofluidic lasers” was accepted for publication by Angewandte Chemie International Edition. In addition, the paper was selected as one of the publications “hot papers” to appear in an upcoming edition. Hot Papers are chosen by the editors for their importance in a rapidly evolving field of high current interest.
Angewandte Chemie International Edition, with its excellent Impact Factor of 12.730 (2010) strengthens its leading position among the general chemistry journals. It is one of the prime chemistry journals in the world, with the highest Impact Factor among chemistry-specific journals that publish original research.
Coulter Translational
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