(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR--In a development that could lead to a deeper understanding of cancer and better early-stage treatment of the disease, University of Michigan researchers have devised a reliable way to grow a certain type of cancer cells from patients outside the body for study.
The new technique is more than three times as effective as previous methods.
Researchers say it's a major step forward in the study of circulating tumor cells, which are shed from tumors and circulate through the blood of cancer patients. They're believed to cause metastasis, the spread of cancer through the body that's responsible for nearly 90 percent of cancer-related deaths.
The cells also hold valuable genetic information that could lead doctors to more informed treatment decisions and even tailor-made therapies for individual patients. And because the cells circulate in the blood, they can be gathered with a blood draw rather than a more invasive tissue biopsy. But progress has been slow, largely because the cells are rare in early-stage cancer patients.
The new capture and culture method changes this by providing a reliable way to get usable numbers of circulating tumor cells from even early-stage patients. It grew new cells from 73 percent of the patients in a recent study, more than three times the success rate of previous methods and a first for early-stage cancers.
It's a major game changer, according to Sunitha Nagrath, U-M assistant professor of chemical engineering who is working to develop the new technology.
"This culture method gives clinicians a way to study each patient's cancer much earlier and much more frequently," Nagrath said. "We can look for resistance to therapy and test potential therapeutics. It also moves us closer to being able to predict metastasis."
The technique may also bring doctors closer to their goal of capturing cancer cells for diagnosis with a quick, non-invasive "blood biopsy" instead of the tissue biopsies that are currently used. This could enable them to keep closer tabs on each patient's status and make more informed treatment decisions.
"We envision a point-of-care solution in four to five years," said Nithya Ramnath, U-M associate professor of medical oncology. "You'd give blood and a short time later, doctors would have a whole repertoire of what's going on with your tumor."
The capture and culture process starts with a microfluidic chip device that captures cancer cells as a blood sample is pumped across it. The research team used a chip made of polydimethylsiloxane on a 1-inch by 3-inch glass slide. They covered the chip with microscopic posts that slow and trap cells, then coated it with antibodies that bind to the cancer cells.
After the cancer cells were captured on the chip, the team pumped in a mixture of collagen and Matrigel growth medium. They also added cancer-associated fibroblast cells that were grown in the lab of Diane Simeone, surgical director at the Multidisciplinary Pancreatic Cancer Clinic of the U-M Cancer Center. This created a three-dimensional environment that closely mimics the conditions inside the body of a cancer patient.
The captured cancer cells prospered in the mixture, reproducing additional cells in 73 percent of tested samples. It was a dramatic improvement over earlier methods, which studied later-stage cancer patients and saw success rates of only around 20 percent.
"Primary cancer cells don't grow well on a flat surface, and like people, they need neighbors to really prosper," Nagrath said. "The collagen and Matrigel provide a three-dimensional environment for the cells to grow, while the cancer-associated fibroblasts give them the neighboring cells they need."
The technology can be applied to most cancers, including breast, lung, pancreatic and others. It could enable doctors to follow the progression of each patient's disease much more closely, says Dr. Max Wicha, Distinguished Professor of Oncology and director of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, who is working to develop the technology.
"Cancer cells change constantly and they can quickly develop resistance to a given treatment," Wicha said. "A device like this will enable us to follow the cancer's progression in real time. If a cancer develops resistance to one therapy, we'll be able to quickly change to a different treatment."
A paper on the findings is published online in Oncotarget and will appear in a forthcoming print edition. The research is conducted under the Translational Oncology Program, which brings together scientists from across U-M to translate research findings into potential new treatments for cancer. Funding is provided by the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award (1DP2OD006672-01).
INFORMATION:
Abstract: Expansion of CTCs from early stage lung cancer patients using a micro-fluidic co-culture model
Researcher: Sunitha Nagrath
SAN FRANCISCO--The Greenland Ice Sheet is ready for its close-up.
The highest-resolution satellite images ever taken of that region are making their debut. And while each individual pixel represents only one moment in time, taken together they show the ice sheet as a kind of living body--flowing, crumbling and melting out to sea.
The Ohio State University has partnered with the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota to turn images captured by DigitalGlobe's Worldview-1 and 2 satellites into publicly available elevation maps that researchers can use to ...
ANN ARBOR--Impending fatherhood can lower two hormones--testosterone and estradiol--for men, even before their babies are born, a new University of Michigan study found.
Other studies indicate that men's hormones change once they become fathers, and there is some evidence that this is a function of a decline after the child's birth. The new U-M study is the first to show that the decline may begin even earlier, during the transition to fatherhood, said Robin Edelstein, the study's lead author.
"We don't yet know exactly why men's hormones are changing," said Edelstein, ...
LONDON, UK (18 December 2014)--A new study released today presents powerful evidence that clearing trees not only spews carbon into the atmosphere, but also triggers major shifts in rainfall and increased temperatures worldwide that are just as potent as those caused by current carbon pollution. Further, the study finds that future agricultural productivity across the globe is at risk from deforestation-induced warming and altered rainfall patterns.
The report, "Effects of Tropical Deforestation on Climate Change and Agriculture," published today in Nature Climate Change ...
Cuprates are materials with great promise for achieving superconductivity at higher temperatures (-120oC). This could mean low-cost electricity without energy loss. Intense research has focused on understanding the physics of cuprates in the hope that we can develop room-temperature superconductors. EPFL scientists have now used a cutting-edge technique to uncover the way cuprates become superconductors. Their work is published in Nature Communications.
Conventional superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with no electrical resistance under temperatures ...
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (December 18, 2014) - Millions of Americans with severe allergies and asthma are prescribed medical devices to help relieve symptoms and sometimes, to treat potentially fatal allergic reactions. Unfortunately, very few people use their prescribed medical devices properly - even if they think they know how.
According to a new study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), misuse of epinephrine auto-injectors has been documented in cases ...
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (December 18, 2014) - Discovering your child has a severe food allergy can be a terrible shock. Even more stressful can be determining what foods your child can and cannot eat, and constructing a new diet which might eliminate entire categories of foods.
According to a new study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), providing parents with detailed, individual advice from a dietician is a key component of effective food allergy care.
"We ...
(PHILADELPHIA) - Prostate cancer affects more than 23,000 men this year in the USA however the individual genes that initiate prostate cancer formation are poorly understood. Finding an enzyme that regulates this process could provide excellent new prevention approaches for this common malignancy. Sirtuin enzymes have been implicated in neurodegeneration, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Research published online Thursday (Dec 18th) in The American Journal of Pathology show the loss of one of sirtuin (SIRT1) drives the formation of early prostate cancer (prostatic intraepithelial ...
A new study has found that children born prematurely show differences in a subtle but important aspect of memory: the ability to form and retrieve memories about context, such as what, when, and where something happened. This type of memory is important, but can be missed on the usual set of direct assessments. The new research suggests that it may be valuable to find targeted ways to help strengthen this aspect of memory in children born preterm.
The study also found that the hippocampus region of the brain is smaller in children born prematurely. This is the part of ...
Infants who frequently react to unfamiliar objects, people, and situations by becoming afraid and withdrawing are referred to as having a behaviorally inhibited temperament. As these infants grow up, many continue to be inhibited or reticent when they experience new things, including meeting new people. Inhibited children are more likely than their peers to develop anxiety problems, especially social anxiety, as they get older. A new longitudinal study has found that behavioral inhibition that persists across early childhood is associated with social anxiety in adolescence, ...
Do the effects of early caregiving experiences remain or fade as individuals develop? A new study has found that sensitive caregiving in the first three years of life predicts an individual's social competence and academic achievement, not only during childhood and adolescence, but also into adulthood.
The study, by researchers at the University of Minnesota, the University of Delaware, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, appears in the journal Child Development. It was carried out in an effort to replicate and expand on findings from the NICHD Study ...
