Pathologists beware:bedside microchip 1hour diagnosis of needlebiopsies viacellphone

[Lani]

Sounds like the old one hour drive-in photo booths (showing my age!)

More accurate(less false negatives) and better able to sample more areas of the tumor to get more indicative area(s) in heterogenous tumors

For those waiting for results, this progress cannot come soon enough!



Microchip Spots Cancerous Tumors Within an Hour, Study Shows
[HealthDay News]

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 23 (HealthDay News) — Scientists say they have developed a microchip that can be attached to a smart phone and diagnose cancerous tumors within an hour, from the patient's bedside.

The so-called microNMR chip, which uses magnetic nanoparticles to measure proteins and other chemical compounds in tumors, requires only tiny amounts of tissue to make a diagnosis, researchers said. Instead of more invasive methods, the biopsy can be done with fine needle aspiration, which withdraws cells from suspicious lesions.

"We tried to determine a molecular fingerprint, if you will," said study co-author Jered B. Haun, a postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "It was a nice surprise just how well it worked with all the protein markers. One of our big goals was not only to be able to tell patients they have cancer as accurately as possible, but as quickly as possible."

The study, which was funded by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is published in the Feb. 23 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Using the microchip — which can be hooked up to smart phones such as iPhones and Blackberrys — researchers analyzed tissue samples from 50 patients with suspected malignancies, correctly diagnosing cancer in 44 patients within 60 minutes in 96 percent of cases by zoning in on four of nine protein markers.

In contrast, standard pathology methods typically require three or more days to produce a diagnosis and are only 84 percent accurate, the researchers noted.

Study participants, whose average age was 64, had suspicious lesions in a variety of organs, including the lungs, colon, pancreas, liver and breasts, and were already scheduled to receive biopsies for abnormal stomach tissue. Their results were validated with traditional pathology — which also didn't assess differences in tumor cell types as well as the microchip — along with an independent group of 20 additional patients, Haun said. The microchip diagnoses in the additional group were 100 percent accurate, according to the study.

"False negatives and non-diagnostic samples are both at higher incidence with standard pathology," Huan said. "Since the [microchip-tested] sample size is so small, we take small aspirants of different areas of the tumor ... to get a more global view of the results," which can also impact treatment requirements.

Huan and the other study authors reported no financial conflicts of interest.

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ABSTRACT: Micro-NMR for Rapid Molecular Analysis of Human Tumor Samples
[Science Translational Medicine]

Although tumor cells obtained from human patients by image-guided intervention are a valuable source for diagnosing cancer, conventional means of analysis are limited. Here, we report the development of a quantitative micro-NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) system for rapid, multiplexed analysis of human tumors. We implemented the technology in a clinical setting to analyze cells obtained by fine-needle aspirates from suspected lesions in 50 patients and validated the results in an independent cohort of another 20 patients. Single fine-needle aspirates yielded sufficient numbers of cells to enable quantification of multiple protein markers in all patients within 60 min. Moreover, using a four-protein signature, we report a 96% accuracy for establishing a cancer diagnosis, surpassing conventional clinical analyses by immunohistochemistry. Our results also show that protein expression patterns decay with time, underscoring the need for rapid sampling and diagnosis close to the patient bedside. We also observed a surprising degree of heterogeneity in protein expression both across the different patient samples and even within the same tumor, which has important implications for molecular diagnostics and therapeutic drug targeting. Our quantitative point-of-care micro-NMR technique shows potential for cancer diagnosis in the clinic.