Zettai Shonen

A team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara have developed a new technology capable of distinguishing between cancerous cells in bodily fluids and healthy cells. The researchers say that even though the technology is in its early stages of development it will surely be able, in the not so distant future, to understand when prostate cancer will metastasize and spread to other parts of the body.

Alessia Pallaoro, a member of the research team said that studies have proven that there is a strong relationship between the number of cancer cells in the blood and the outcome of the disease. Generally the more cancer cells a patient has, the smaller chances he has to recover.

The research team believes that the cancer cells found in the blood are the initiators of the metastasis. Therefore this new technology will allow them to identify these cells that would mean a better diagnosis and during the treatment a better control tool.

Gary Braun, another member of the research team said that it is not the primary tumor that kills prostate cancer patients but the metastasis. This process hasn't been fully understood so far, but if the new technology will work properly that would mean that doctors would be able to catch all the cancerous cells that spread through the body. That means there would be no more metastasis and cancer patients would have much better chances of recovering.

The tool used for this job is a special type of laser called surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and silver nano-particles. The nano particles attach themselves to the cancer cells and when they interact with the surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy they emit various sets of colours different than fluorescence. The secret to this new monitoring tool is that it allows doctors to include more markers to identify and study the cancer cells. The researcher hope that is tagging will help monitor the cancer cells so that doctors will learn what triggers the metastasis and how it manifests.

Right now the research team is working on translating the technology into a diagnostic microdevice so that doctors can operate the device.