Cancer is a condition in which some cells in the body grow out of control and spread to other parts of the body. It can begin in practically any part of the body. Human cells proliferate and multiply to generate new cells in the normal course of things. Cells die as they become old or injured, and new cells replace them. This ordered process can sometimes break down, resulting in aberrant or damaged cells growing and multiplying when they shouldn’t. Tumours may be confined to any particular organ or tissue, known as benign or may be spread from their point of origin to other organs and tissues as in malignant. Cancerous tumours can infect adjacent tissues and spread to other parts of the body, resulting in the formation of new tumours (a process called metastasis). MIT engineers have now created a new diagnostic nanoparticle that can detect cancer cells.
Imaging analysis is used in traditional cancer diagnostic techniques such as mammography, colonoscopy, and CT scans. This MIT-developed molecular diagnostic nanoparticle on the other hand is able to identify certain cancer-related chemicals in physiological fluids such as blood or urine.
Detecting Tumors: Why is it tough?
There are over 100 cancer-related ailments, and it’s evident that the standard-of-care for managing cancer diseases, various imaging modalities, isn’t keeping up with the disease’s increasing nature. According to the National Cancer Institute of the United States, cancer care expenses were $125 billion in 2010 and are expected to reach $200 billion by 2020. It is abundantly obvious that the future of cancer detection sensors/biomarkers will be simple and inexpensive alternatives.
Early detection, which is critical since cancer survival rates are greatly enhanced when cancer is detected early in its development, still necessitates bold new tactics. A more acceptable definition for early detection would include recognising a lesion with malignant potential before it is beyond clinical control capabilities, which would improve public health outcomes. It’s important to note that this entails both positively recognising the malignant potential as well as detecting it early enough for promising treatments to be accessible; preferably focused treatments with few adverse effects.
Sangeeta Bhatia and her team have been working on cancer diagnostics for several years, inventing synthetic biomarkers that can be easily identified in the urine. A recent accomplishment of her is a broad sensor that detects primary cancers as well as their metastases. Sangeeta Bhatia, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, says, “It can trigger a urine signal and also allow us to visualize where the tumours are.”
Proteases are enzymes that enable cancer cells to escape their initial sites by cutting through proteins in the extracellular matrix. These proteases cleave peptides that are coated on cancer-detecting nanoparticles that have been developed. When these particles come into contact with a tumour, the peptides are broken and expelled in the urine, making them easily detectable. They do not, however, disclose the tumour’s exact location or whether it has migrated beyond its original organ.
However, the researchers were recently able to develop a “multimodal” diagnostic that can perform both molecular screening (detecting the urinary signal) and imaging to pinpoint the specific location of the original tumour as well as any metastases. They combined a radioactive tracer known as copper-64 with a peptide that is attracted to the microenvironment of tumours, allowing it to concentrate at tumour locations. The researchers discovered that using acid-sensitive nanoparticles to accumulate Copper-64 in the tumour surroundings produces a significantly sharper image of lung cancers.
Credits: EORTC
Multimodal Nano-sensors for cancer screening:
They’ve been programmed to look for and respond to specific markers in the tumour microenvironment. The nano-sensors also serve as a noninvasive urinary monitoring tool as well as an on-demand medical imaging agent for detecting tumour spread and assessing treatment response. The diagnostic nano-sensors were examined in two mice models of metastatic colon cancer, in which tumour cells move to the liver or lungs and grow. The researchers were able to track how the tumours responded to treatment using both the urine signal and the imaging agent. The team hopes to make it a regular cancer screening that can be done once a year.
The researchers also claimed that the nano-sensors they developed offer an advantage over the conventional PET (Positron emission tomography) technique that used FDG (F-fluorodeoxyglucose), a radioactive form of glucose that is taken up by metabolically active cells, including cancer cells. They claim that delivering copper-64 with their nanoparticles in the tumour environment provides a much clearer image of tumours.
Research and Industrial Prospects :
Bhatia believes that if this type of nanoparticle diagnostic is approved for use in human patients, it could be valuable for assessing how well patients respond to treatment and for long-term monitoring of tumour recurrence or metastasis, particularly in colon cancer. Patients might be checked every six months with the urine test and if the urine test is positive, they could do an imaging examination with a radioactive form of the same chemical to see where the disease has spread. In the long run, this technology might be part of a diagnostic procedure that is administered on a regular basis to detect any type of cancer. They want to utilize it as part of a screening protocol, either alone or in combination with other tests. Every six months or annually, a urine test using Nano-sensors would be part of a general checkup.
For the animals, the study of these nanoparticles is still in the testing stage. If it works in animals, it could be a game-changer in modern medicine. The nano-sensor test will be able to identify cancer traces in the body with ease. Early detection of cancer is crucial. It would not only minimize cancer-related deaths but will also lead to improvements in the field, allowing us to treat cancer more effectively.
References:
- MIT News (Cancer test nanoparticles)
- Hauert, S., Berman, S., Nagpal, R. and Bhatia, S., 2013. A computational framework for identifying design guidelines to increase the penetration of targeted nanoparticles into tumors. Nano Today, 8(6), pp.566-576.
- Technology review
- Buss, C. and Bhatia, S., 2020. Nanoparticle delivery of immunostimulatory oligonucleotides enhances response to checkpoint inhibitor therapeutics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(24), pp.13428-13436.