cancer diagnosis

Mehmet Toner, study leader and a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard Medical School, along with Brian Wardle, an MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, has created an instrument that could eventually allow doctors to see if cancer has spread from its original site faster than ever.

Circulating tumor cells, which are cancer cells that escaped from the original tumor, are hard to distinguish since 1-milliliter of blood sample contains a few of them amongst tens of billions of normal blood cells.

The breakthrough could significantly help in better diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, saving millions, the scientists said.

Currently available cancer diagnosis and treatment options are extremely difficult for both the patients as well as the caregivers.

Leukemia cells, cancer cells examined
The new study by scientists Dmitri Lapotko and Jason Hafner from the Rice University, Houston, Texas, U.S. tested the technique on leukemia cells and cancer cells from the head and neck.