Cancer Diagnostic using Nanoparticles

Even today, causes for cancer remain quite a difficult mystery that modern medicine has yet to find a solution for. This is different from detection, however, which has been steadily improving the past few years and may have made a massive leap recently by some researchers from MIT. The development of a new diagnostic system that can be done with only a urine test has created some buzz around these researchers and their work, which could be a vital part in the future of effectively diagnosing and treating cancer patients.

Over 1.8 million new cases of cancer we diagnosed last year in the United States alone, and about 600 thousand patients passed while battling the disease.  Common forms of cancer like breast, lung, and prostate cancer plague huge volumes of people around the globe, and treatment can only do so much if they are not diagnosed early enough. Ideally, the ideas these researchers propose will help combat cancer in the coming years, making it easier to detect cancer within a population and move on to treatment as soon as possible, increasing rate of survival.

Diagnosing Cancer and Locating Tumors

The majority of tests currently used to detect cancer are based on imaging, examples including mammography, colonoscopy, and CT scans. Only more recently have researchers developed diagnostics on the molecular level that allow detection of specific cancer-associated molecules that are in circulation throughout the body and can be found in blood or urine. However, Sangeeta Bhatia, a John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, along with her team, have created a nanoparticle that combines both systems of detecting cancer into one. Not only can it reveal the presence of cancerous molecules through a urine test, but it can also function as an imagine agent to locate the tumor. The new nanoparticle-based diagnostic ideally would “be used to detect cancer anywhere in the body, including tumors that have metastasized from their original locations,” says SciTechDaily.

This system is based around the nanoparticles, that can produce what are essentially synthetic biomarkers in urine if a person has cancer, and it has so far been quite successful at doing so according to MIT News. Up until now, there was no way to tell where the tumors were located in the body, however, with this method. But earlier this month the team has been able to add this function to their method.  Cancers make use of proteases, an enzyme, in order to spread throughout the body of the cancer victim and slice through proteins in the extracellular matrix. The nanoparticles Bhatia and her team have cooked up are laced with peptide that are also prone to be cut up by the proteases cancers use. Therefore, if tumors are somewhere in the body, the nanoparticles will be damaged and thus indicate the presence of said tumor.

What the team calls a “multimodal” diagnostic, is the method in which a molecular screening through detecting a urinary signal can be followed up by PET imaging that can track the nanoparticles, or more specifically the radioactive copper isotope present in the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles are also attracted to acidic environments thanks to the peptides laced within, and therefore are able to reach a tumor and insert themselves into cell membranes to create a strong imagine signal that also mitigates background noise. With this, people can be diagnosed with cancer quickly and effectively, and the tumor can also be located within a short timeframe if the test is positive.

Cancer Screening in the Future

The team has a goal to make this method available to everyone, to the point that everyone can be tested annually. Similar to getting the flu shot every year, people all over the US and eventually the rest of the world can get a urine test once a year as part of a general check-up, says Sangeeta Bhatia. The imaging test would only take place if the urine test were to come back positive, so the addition of this test would not be difficult, time consuming, or hinder anyone who is already going in for a check-up anyway.

There is a lot more work that needs to be done for this to be put into action, however. The method needs to be approved still for use in human patients and requires funding in order to take off. However, once it does become widely available, the nanoparticles could be used not only to detect cancer, but also log and evaluate how patients respond to treatment, and whether or not a different avenue of treatment should be taken to improve chances of survival. Patients could take the urinary test twice a year, for example, according to Bhatia, and then follow up with an imagine study if it tests positive again, so that doctors could indicate where the disease has spread around the body.