Health & Medicine - Posted by Steven Adams-Missouri on Monday, January 9, 2012 11:27 - 3 Comments 
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5) Loading ...Device spots melanoma cell by cell
John Viator, associate professor of biomedical engineering and dermatology, demonstrates a new photoacoustic method with a tabletop device that scans a lymph node biopsy with laser pulses. This method could help doctors identify the stage of melanoma with more accuracy. (Credit: U. Missouri)
U. MISSOURI (US) — A new photoacoustic device will detect melanoma long before tumors develop, say researchers.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Early detection of melanoma, the most aggressive skin cancer, is critical because melanoma will spread rapidly throughout the body.
Now, University of Missouri researchers are one step closer to melanoma cancer detection at the cellular level, long before tumors have a chance to form.
Commercial production of a device that measures melanoma using photoacoustics, or laser-induced ultrasound, will soon be available to scientists and academia for cancer studies.
The commercial device also will be tested in clinical trials to provide the data required to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for early diagnosis of metastatic melanoma and other cancers.
“Using a small blood sample, our device and method will provide an earlier diagnosis for aggressive melanoma cancers,” says John Viator, associate professor of biomedical engineering and dermatology.
“We compare the detection method to watching an eight-lane highway full of white compact cars. In our tests, the cancer cells look like a black 18-wheeler.”
Currently, physicians use CT or MRI scans for melanoma cancer detection, which cost thousands of dollars. Viator’s photoacoustic device emits laser light into a blood sample, and melanin within the cancer cells absorbs the light.
Those cancer cells then expand as the lasers rapidly heat and then cool the cancer cells, making them prominent to researchers. The device also would capture the expanded cells, identifying the form of cancer the physicians are fighting and the best treatment method.
Viator has recently signed a commercialization license to begin offering the device and method to scientists and academia for research. They are also preparing studies for FDA approval for clinical use, which is expected to take approximately two to three years.
Viator says the final device will look similar to a desktop printer, and the costs to run the tests in a hospital would be a few hundred dollars.
“We are attempting to provide a faster and cheaper screening method, which is ultimately better for the patient and the physician,” Viator says.
“There are several melanoma drugs on the horizon. Combined with the new photoacoustic detection method, physicians will be able to use targeted therapies and personalized treatments, changing the medical management of this aggressive cancer.
Plus, if the test is as accurate as we believe it will be, our device could be used as a standard screening in targeted populations.”
More news from the University of Missouri: http://munews.missouri.edu/
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3 Comments
Bruce Aefauver
Early detection of cancer, especially aggressive types like melanoma, is crucial. It sounds like an affordable and efficient way for doctors to diagnose the condition early so people can get help before cancer gets out of hand. It is horrible how many people are facing cancer everyday, including some of my family members and friends.
Anne, thank you for your kind assessment of our technology. My hope is that we can detect cancer early enough that we won’t need aggressive treatment that is so hard on patients. Rather than fight large, macroscopic tumors, we should be able to fight micro-metastasis with much less invasive or aggressive means.
Stop this and cure the stuff.Why do people have to keep dieing?The research has been going on since mustard gas was invented.People are leaving the US to have their cancers treated.You haven’t heard?They are loosing faith in american doctors.People are saying that the chemo and radiation doesn’t cure,only puts off the inevitable.I have a friend who was just diagnosed with prostrate cancer and they suggest a treatment that cost 80 grand and the doctor told him there were no prmises for recovery.What’s up with this?I am not by myself on these thoughts.The world is looking and wondering if the research is not really happening.Some think there is a cure but only the real wealthy get to use it.Some think that God is not going to let scientist know about a cure until the doctors stop making money off the sick,which in my thinking is selfish at best.Do you doctors really like charging your parents their life savings for a months worth of treatments.How about your grandparents or your children.If the federal government is standing in your way of using another treatment stand up like a man and tell them you want to use something else.It’s a known fact that doctors kill more humans than any illness or anything else for that matter.I here this every time i take someone to the hospital or to a clinic.Yahoo news just had a clip the other day about Gilenya and Tysabri and what it is doing for MS patients.The MS patients said it is a lie and very misleading.People who are just getting MS don’t know any better.They are being sucked into a outright lie.You know that the doctors are going to start thinning out soon anyway because of the cuts in medicare.It’s all going to trikle down to you jobs.Turn this healing process around.Cancer patients scare easily.The only thing they know is what doctors tell them.They put more trust in you than they do Christ.