(Press-News.org) DENVER — Researchers have identified a novel, dual-platform technology, the On-Q-ity Circulating Cancer Capture and Characterization Chip (C5), which they believe is more efficient than the commonly used single-platform device in identifying circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in breast cancer.
Analyzing CTCs in blood can identify cancer cells and cancer cell mutations to provide physicians with methods for improved cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.
In order to efficiently capture CTCs, two capture mechanisms were used to trap CTCs by antibody affinity and size. Gary Palmer, M.D., chief medical officer of On-Q-ity, Inc., Waltham, Mass., and colleagues assessed whether capturing CTCs by using both technologies at the same time was more beneficial and captured a greater number of CTCs than either technology alone.
These laboratory results were presented at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development, held here.
"It made sense that using both capture methods would be more efficient than either alone. Some CTCs are smaller and often avoid size capture," Palmer said. "Other CTCs have less antigen expression and can also avoid antibody affinity capture. Our dual capture platform provides a better system to ensure that fewer CTCs will be lost."
Using a human breast cancer cell model, the researchers found the On-Q-ity C5 captured a greater number of CTCs; 65 percent of the cells were captured compared to 45 percent of captured cells with the size-based method and 16 percent with antibody affinity.
"Capturing a greater number of CTCs using both mechanisms will hopefully provide better information to help health care providers offer an easier, faster and more accurate diagnosis, treatment prediction and prognosis to their patients," Palmer said.
On-Q-ity researchers are currently conducting additional studies to confirm the usefulness of capturing these CTCs in the clinic, and are learning how to make the processing more sensitive and easier to use. They are also evaluating this platform's use in late-stage breast cancer and colon, prostate and lung cancers.
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The mission of the American Association for Cancer Research is to prevent and cure cancer. Founded in 1907, the AACR is the world's oldest and largest professional organization dedicated to advancing cancer research. The membership includes 32,000 basic, translational and clinical researchers; health care professionals; and cancer survivors and advocates in the United States and more than 90 other countries. The AACR marshals the full spectrum of expertise from the cancer community to accelerate progress in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer through high-quality scientific and educational programs. It funds innovative, meritorious research grants, research fellowships and career development awards. The AACR Annual Meeting attracts more than 18,000 participants who share the latest discoveries and developments in the field. Special Conferences throughout the year present novel data across a wide variety of topics in cancer research, treatment and patient care. The AACR publishes six major peer-reviewed journals: Cancer Research; Clinical Cancer Research; Molecular Cancer Therapeutics; Molecular Cancer Research; Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention; and Cancer Prevention Research. The AACR also publishes CR, a magazine for cancer survivors and their families, patient advocates, physicians and scientists, providing a forum for sharing essential, evidence-based information and perspectives on progress in cancer research, survivorship and advocacy.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research shows that an intravenous (IV) treatment may cut a person's risk of dying from bacterial meningitis. The research is published in the September 29, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The treatment is called dexamethasone.
"Using this treatment in people infected with meningitis has been under debate because in a few large studies it was shown to be ineffective," said study author Diederik van de Beek, MD, PhD, with the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands ...
In two landmark studies published today in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis (DTA), UK and Swiss research teams reveal two techniques proven to identify dissolved cocaine in bottles of wine or rum. These tools will allow customs officials to quickly identify bottles being used to smuggle cocaine, without the need to open or disturb the container.
Cocaine is among the most common drugs of abuse and a large number of imaginative techniques of smuggling cocaine through border controls have been reported in recent years. One of the latest techniques involves smuggling ...
Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- The story of the double helix's discovery has a few new twists. A new primary source -- a never-before-read stack of letters to and from Francis Crick, and other historical materials dating from the years 1950-76 -- has been uncovered by two professors at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
The letters both confirm and extend current knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the epoch-making discovery of DNA's elegant double-helical structure, for which Crick, James D. Watson (now CSHL's chancellor ...
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Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration supported the immunotherapy study. Grants from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, supported the study of intermediate-risk neuroblastoma. Both studies were conducted through the Children’s Oncology Group.
“Anti-GD2 Antibody with GM-CSF, Interleukin-2 and Isotretinoin for Neuroblastoma,” and “Outcome after Reduced Chemotherapy for Intermediate Risk Neuroblastoma,” New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 30, 2010.
About The Children’s Hospital ...
EDITOR'S NOTE: Images to accompany this story are available at http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/river-crisis.html END ...
Multiple environmental stressors, such as agricultural runoff, pollution and invasive species, threaten rivers that serve 80 percent of the world's population, around 5 billion people, according to researchers from The City College (CCNY) of The City University of New York (CUNY), University of Wisconsin and seven other institutions. These same stressors endanger the biodiversity of 65 percent of the world's river habitats and put thousands of aquatic wildlife species at risk.
The findings, reported in the September 30 issue of Nature, come from the first global-scale ...
HOUSTON -- (Sept. 29, 2010) -- A Rice University-led team of physicists is reporting the first success in a three-year effort to build a precision simulator for superconductors using a grid of intersecting laser beams and ultracold atomic gas.
The research appears this week in the journal Nature. Using lithium atoms cooled to within a few billionths of a degree of absolute zero and loaded into optical tubes, the researchers created a precise analog of a one-dimensional superconducting wire.
Because the atoms in the experiment are so cold, they behave according to the ...
CHAPEL HILL – An international team of researchers, including a number from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill schools of medicine and public health, have discovered hundreds of genes that influence human height.
Their findings confirm that the combination of a large number of genes in any given individual, rather than a simple "tall" gene or "short" gene, helps to determine a person's stature. It also points the way to future studies exploring how these genes combine into biological pathways to impact human growth.
"While we haven't explained all of the ...
EDITOR'S NOTE: An image and video are available at http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/macaque-mirror.html
The study, with several videos of the monkeys, appears in today's PLoS One, at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012865 END ...
New discoveries about the immune defenses of rare HIV patients who produce antibodies that prevent infection suggest a novel direction for designing new vaccines. Researchers at Rockefeller University and colleagues have now made two fundamental discoveries about the so called broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies, which effectively keep the virus at bay. By detailing the molecular workings of a proven immune response, the researchers hope their work will ultimately enable them to similarly arm those who are not equipped with this exceptional immunological firepower. ...
