It would be tough for most people to take a snubbed-nose scissors to an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of blank paper and carve out a perfect silhouette of, say, a horse from scratch. But any kid can be an artist if it means merely cutting along a boundary separating two zones of different colors.
Tumor-excision surgery requires an artist's touch. It can be tough to distinguish cancerous from healthy tissues, yet the surgeon needs to approach perfection in precisely removing every possible trace of the tumor while leaving as much healthy tissue intact as possible. To help surgeons out, technologists have been designing contrast agents that target only tumor cells, thus providing at least a dotted line for scalpel wielders.
Stanford pathologist and molecular-probe designer Matthew Bogyo, PhD, in a study published in ACS Chemical Biology, has now demonstrated, using mouse models of breast, lung and colon cancer, the effectiveness of a fluorescence-emitting optical contrast agent that selectively accumulates in tumors and can be used to guide surgery. In effect, the probe lights up the tumor, providing a convenient, high-resolution dotted line for its excision.
Perhaps more striking, the new study showed that this probe, designed by Bogyo's group, is compatible with a robotic remote minimally invasive surgery system that is already enjoying widespread commercial use. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., the company that sells this system, collaborated on the study.
Previously: Stanford researchers explore new ways of identifying colon cancer, Cat guts, car crashes, and warp-speed Toxoplasma infections and Compound clogs Plasmodium's in-house garbage disposal, hitting malaria parasite where it hurts
Photo by Merryl Zorza
