{"id":22076,"date":"2017-09-25T17:30:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T21:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/?p=22076"},"modified":"2019-03-12T12:29:18","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T16:29:18","slug":"university-texas-austin-pen-detects-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/university-texas-austin-pen-detects-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Texas at Austin Researchers Invent Pen That Accurately Detects Cancer in 10 Seconds"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team of scientists and engineers at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin has <\/span>invented a pen device<\/span><\/a> capable of accurately identifying cancerous tissue in just 10 seconds. The MasSpec Pen will help surgeons pinpoint cancerous tissue during surgery, so they know where to cut or preserve. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the real problems in cancer surgery is establishing the margins of where to cut,\u201d said <\/span>Thomas Milner<\/span><\/a>, project collaborator and professor of biomedical engineering at UT Austin. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to remove too much tissue, but they want to make sure to get the cancer out. So, the implication of technology is that it can better establish the tumor margins for removal of cancer tissue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The research is published in <\/span>Science Translational Medicine<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The current method for diagnosing cancer and identifying cancerous regions during surgery takes 30 minutes and is sometimes inaccurate. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo make an absolute determination if a tissue is cancerous, the procedure is to take a small portion of the tissue, a biopsy, out of the region of interest and to send the tissue to the pathology lab where the tissue is processed, cut into pieces and put on slides,\u201d Milner said. <\/span><\/p>\n

This procedure increases the patient\u2019s risk of infection and negative effects from anesthesia. For some types of cancer, this method has been proven inefficient and has shown unreliable results in 10 to 20 percent of cases. <\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, the MasSpec Pen takes just 10 seconds and has proven reliability.<\/strong> In 253 tests on human cancer patients, the pen quickly identified cancer with 96 percent accuracy. <\/span><\/p>\n

The MacSpec Pen is also noninvasive. It works by simply touching the tip to the questioned tissue and pressing a foot pedal to send the molecular information gathered by the pen to be evaluated by software called a statistical classifier. <\/span><\/p>\n

When the test is complete, the words \u201cNormal\u201d or \u201cCancer\u201d will quickly appear on the computer screen. And for some cancers with varying types, such as lung cancer, the name of the subtype may also appear. <\/span><\/p>\n

To train the software to process the tissue touched by the pen, the team gathered 253 human tissue samples. These samples include both healthy and cancerous tissue from infected breasts, lungs, thyroids, and ovaries. <\/span><\/p>\n

Once the pen touches the tissue area, it releases a drop of water. Then, small molecules move from the tissue into the water. That water sample is driven into a device called a mass spectrometer, which generates a grouping of thousands of molecules called a molecular fingerprint. That fingerprint is then tested to specify the cancerous region.<\/span><\/p>\n