One of my side interests is investigating new advances in health and medicine. In my former career I worked a great deal with different types of assistive technologies for people with various needs such as cerebral palsy, hearing loss, and ambulatory problems. To stay informed of the newest developments I frequent a number of health websites. Recently, I read about a microchip that is being developed that would be able to spot cancer cells in the blood stream. As someone who has a family that has been severely impacted by various types of cancer this news is extremely exciting! This is just a snippet of what is being reported by Yahoo news:
The device can isolate, count and analyze circulating tumor cells from a blood sample, the team at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston said.
These circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, are the tiniest fragments of tumors, which are carried in the blood.
Doctors have known about them for some time, but because they are so rare and so fragile, they have been hard to trap and study in a meaningful way.
“What our technology does is increase the sensitivity many, many fold, to a point where it can become a tool that can be used clinically,” said Mehmet Toner, whose group developed the device.
He said routine monitoring of these cells could help doctors tailor treatments to patients and may one day aid with diagnosis.
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