A new laser device could become a non-invasive and safe tool for the treatment of cancer, including at an advanced stage of the disease.

Science Translational Medicine reports that cancer cells circulating in the blood can be destroyed with a laser beam directed from the outside, according to Pannochka, an online publication for girls and women from 14 to 35 years old.. net The device is especially useful in metastatic cancer, when tumor cells spread freely through the patient's bloodstream.

American researchers led by Vladimir Zharov write that their system accurately detects cancer cells in 27 out of 28 patients - with a sensitivity that is about 1000 times higher than that of any modern technology..

This is already a great achievement, but the research team has learned to kill a significant percentage of tumor cells in real time as they pass through the vessels..

If further developed, the laser device will provide doctors with a safe, non-invasive and effective method of finding and destroying cancer cells before these cells can form new metastases in the body..

“This technology has the potential to suppress cancer metastasis,” explains Vladimir Zharov himself, director of the center for nanomedicine at Arkansas State University of Health Sciences, project leader.

Metastasis is the main cause of death from cancer. Cancer spreads when cells in primary tumors break off and travel through the circulatory or lymphatic system, settling in new organs and forming secondary tumors.

Killing these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) before they can settle can help prevent metastasis and save lives. The ease of counting these cells with a laser beam will enable doctors to more accurately diagnose metastatic cancer like no other method..

The principle of laser technology for cancer treatment.

Zharov and his team tested their system in people with melanoma, skin cancer. By irradiating vessels, the laser emits heat. Circulating melanoma cells absorb more heat than normal cells, quickly warming up and expanding.

This thermal expansion creates sound vibrations known as the photoacoustic effect.. CTCs can be recorded with a small ultrasound transducer placed over the skin next to the laser.

Due to the photoacoustic effect, the laser makes it possible to very accurately count the number of tumor cells that pass through the vessel per unit of time.

The same laser can be used to destroy CSCs in real time. Radiation causes the formation of vapor bubbles on tumor cells. Bubbles expand and collapse, interacting with the cell and mechanically destroying it.

However, the purpose of the study, published the other day, was to test the accuracy of the laser device in the diagnosis of CTCs.. But even when used in low-power diagnostic mode, the laser killed a significant number of cells in six patients..

According to Zharov, one participant managed to destroy 96% of the cancer cells passing through the vessel.. Scientist hopes that in the future, when they increase the power of the device, the technology will become even more effective for therapeutic purposes..

Zharov came up with the idea for this technology more than ten years ago, and since then he has been testing the laser beam on animals and demonstrating its safety to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which approved a clinical trial..

This is the first non-invasive diagnosis of CTCs successfully demonstrated in humans..

At least a hundred other devices have been proposed for monitoring circulating tumor cells.. But most of these systems require blood sampling and analysis outside the body, in a special laboratory.. Only one such device has received an FDA green light: an oven-sized CellSearch analyzer..

At the same time, the closest competitor to the smart laser processes small blood samples, giving the doctor a vague idea of \u200b\u200bthe real situation in the bloodstream.. Of course, this type of diagnosis has not gained popularity in clinical practice..

Researchers from the University of Michigan in April 2019 announced that they have made progress in this direction.. Their wrist device pumps blood out of the body, captures the CTC, and then returns the purified blood back to the bloodstream..

However, in a preclinical study in dogs, the device only processed a couple tablespoons of animal blood over the course of two to three hours of a complex procedure..

Zharov's device can " Scientists say laser technology is about a thousand times more sensitive than CellSearch.

In the future, Zharov and his colleagues will test the device on a larger population of people and combine it with traditional cancer treatments to assess its effect on metastatic processes.. Perhaps a simple device will affect the lives of patients with metastatic cancer more than expensive targeted therapy.

By the way, the photoacoustic effect was first described by Alexander Graham Bell back in 1880, when he transmitted voice signals using a "

Zharov's team christened their device "

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