Photoacoustics technique detects small number of cancer cells
2012-03-27
(Press-News.org) Researchers have developed multiple techniques and procedures to detect cancer cells during the earliest stages of the disease or after treatment. But one of the major limitations of these technologies is their inability to detect the presence of only a few cancer cells.
Now, a research collaboration between the University of Missouri-Columbia and Mexico's Universidad de Guanajuato shows that pulsed photoacoustic techniques, which combine the high optical contrast of optical tomography with the high resolution of ultrasound, can do just that, in vitro. Most cancer cells are naturally elusive, so they used a photoacoustic enhancer to detect them.
New developments are necessary, the researchers say, to be able to properly use photoacoustic techniques to recognize different cancer cell types inside the human body or in blood or tissue samples.
###
Article: "An experimental and theoretical approach to the study of the photoacoustic signal produced by cancer cells" is published in AIP Advances.
Authors: Rafael Pérez Solano (1), Francisco I. Ramirez-Perez (1), Jorge A. Castorena-Gonzalez (2), Edgar Alvarado Anell (3), Gerardo Gutiérrez-Juárez (1), and Luis Polo-Parada (4, 5).
(1) División de Ciencias e Ingenierías-Campus León, Universidad de Guanajuato, México
(2) Department of Bioengineering, University of Missouri-Columbia
(3) Facultad de Ingeniería en Computación y Electrónica, Universidad De La Salle, México
(4) Department of Medical Pharmacology and Physiology, University of Missouri-Columbia
(5) Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Missouri-Columbia
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-03-27
In search of a different perspective on the physics of cancer, Princeton University and University of California, San Francisco researchers teamed up to use game theory to look for simplicity within the complexity of the dynamics of cooperator and cheater cells under metabolic stress conditions and high spatial heterogeneity. In the context of cancer, cooperator cells obey the general rules of communal survival, while cheater cells do not.
The ultimate goal of this research was to gain an understanding of the dynamics of cancer tumor evolution under stress. Since cancer ...
2012-03-27
Bald Head Design, Ohio based web design firm is helping dentist improve their communication between patients and their practices through the creation of social media outlets - Facebook and Twitter. By offering a comprehensive social media strategy, which includes not only the creation of these social media tools, but by also providing training and resources providing for a successful social media marketing campaign. Social media allows patients to connect and engage with both the dentists and their staff.
With over 500 million users, and growing, Facebook is becoming ...
2012-03-27
Androgen suppression – the inhibition of testosterone and other male hormones – is a routine therapy for prostate cancer. Unfortunately, it can dramatically reduce the quality of patients' sex lives and, more importantly, lead to cancer recurrence in a more deadly androgen-independent form. A new paper combining mathematical modeling with clinical data validates a different approach: cycling patients on and off treatment. Such intermittent androgen suppression alleviates most unwanted side effects and postpones the development of resistance to treatment. With the model, ...
2012-03-27
The theory of quantum metabolism is the idea that quantum processes, such as entanglement, influence the metabolism of cells. This idea offers scientists a new explanation for the metabolic changes that cause healthy cells to transform into cancerous ones. The metamorphosis gives cancerous cells the ability to outcompete healthy cells for space and nutrients, causing the disease to spread. Understanding the quantum metabolic underpinnings of the transformation could potentially lead to new types of treatment to stop cancer growth, researchers argue.
###
Article: "Implications ...
2012-03-27
Some breast cancer tumours may be resistant to a common chemotherapy treatment, suggests recent medical research at the University of Alberta.
Principal investigator Ing Swie Goping and her team discovered some breast cancer tumours had low levels of certain genes, and that those tumours didn't respond well to taxane chemotherapy, a common treatment used in breast cancer.
"These tumours didn't shrink and were resistant to a common chemotherapy treatment. These results give us a strong incentive to continue our research," she said.
Goping and her team looked at tumour ...
2012-03-27
In response to record numbers of Australians moving their lives online, Australia Post today announced a free Australia Post Digital MailBox for every Australian will be launched this year, in addition to opening 30 superstores across the country.
"The Australia Post Digital MailBox will allow businesses, government entities and customers to communicate through a secure online portal that can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, wherever they are," said Australia Post Chairman, David Mortimer.
"Just as the traditional letterbox has been a vital ...
2012-03-27
SAN FRANCISCO -- Herpetologists from the California Academy of Sciences and University of Texas at El Paso discovered a single specimen of the Bururi long-fingered frog (Cardioglossa cyaneospila) during a research expedition to Burundi in December 2011. The frog was last seen by scientists in 1949 and was feared to be extinct after decades of turmoil in the tiny East African nation.
For biologists studying the evolution and distribution of life in Africa, Burundi sits at an intriguing geographic crossroads since it borders the vast Congo River Basin, the Great Rift Valley, ...
2012-03-27
The Offshore Group recently recorded another podcast in its continuing series on Mexico business issues on the subject of Mexico manufacturing facility start-up under its Mexico Shelter Plan.
Leonard Ottosen, project manager at The Offshore Group's La Angostura Industrial Park in Saltillo, Coahuila, describes how companies that are new to the country are guided from the beginning of the start-up process through to the point at which actual part production takes place under the Mexico Manufacturing Shelter Plan.
The Offshore Group's sister company, Manufacturas Zapaliname, ...
2012-03-27
Twenty years ago in Chicago, a small leak in an unused freight tunnel expanded beneath the Windy City and started a flood which eventually gushed through the entire tunnel system. A quarter-million people were evacuated from the buildings above, nearly $2 billion in damages accrued, and it took 6 weeks to pump the tunnels dry.
How much more costly – in lives and infrastructure – would a flood in a heavily used, underwater subway tunnel be today?
In January 2012 the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) successfully tested ...
2012-03-27
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A paper by neuroscientists at the University at Buffalo and Buffalo State College suggests that ingestion of components of afterbirth or placenta -- placentophagia -- may offer benefits to human mothers and perhaps to non-mothers and males.
They say this possibility does not warrant the wholesale ingestion of afterbirth, for some very good reasons, but that it deserves further study.
Mark Kristal, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UB, directs the graduate program in behavioral neuroscience, and has studied placentophagia for more than ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Photoacoustics technique detects small number of cancer cells
