Cure for cancer? Nowhere near so far. But work is being done on early detection of cancer, which could be almost as good as a cure.

I keep reading everywhere about cures for cancer. Almost every day I hear about this or another new way to solve cancer, coming in the freshest press release from the universities and research labs. This is nonsense, obviously. Cancer is just a tiny word for the hundreds of different afflictions that arise when a cell can’t control itself any longer and the immune system turns a blind eye on it. There is no miracle cure for this entire category of disorders. All the same, possibly the most important thing we need right now is the ability to diagnose a cancer patient early on, when the tumor is less than a thousand cells in size. If we manage to do that, the chances of it being eliminated using chemotherapy are actually pretty good. Sadly, most people go to the doctor when they’re feeling pain, which usually means the tumor already contains a few millions – if not billions – of cells. We need better diagnostic systems!

A possible solution for this problem was published on December 13 in the advanced online publication of Nature Nanotechnology. A team led by Yale University researchers has used nanosensors to measure cancer biomarkers in whole blood samples. The novel device filters the biomarkers from the loaded blood sample and thus creates a buildup of the cancer antigens on the chip, which allows for detection of extremely small concentrations of the biomarkers. So far they’ve managed to detect only antigens specific to prostate and breast cancer, but it’s a good start, and the read out time take only a few minutes. I dare dream of the day when every doctor will have such a device in his office calibrated for most types of cancer, and will ask every patient to give a blood sample every year. When that day comes, I suspect that cancers of all sort will receive a harsh blow.

Source in Yale University