A team of researchers from University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (UHNM), Keele University, and Loughborough University have developed a ground breaking blood test to detect lung cancer. “In a new study, the ‘Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) microspectroscopy’ technique has been shown to identify a single cancer cell in a blood sample,” the Loughborough University has said in an official statement. Professor Josep Sulé-Suso, Associate Specialist in Oncology at UHNM and lead author of the study, said: “Our team was able to detect a single lung cancer cell in a patient’s blood by combining advanced infrared scanning technology with computer analysis, focusing on the unique chemical fingerprint of cancer cells.“This approach has the potential to help patients receive earlier diagnoses, personalised treatments, and fewer invasive procedures, and it could eventually be applied to many types of cancer beyond lung cancer.”Circulating tumour cells, or CTCs, are cancer cells that break away from a tumour and drift through the bloodstream. Even though they’re tiny, they can tell doctors a lot, like how a cancer is developing, whether treatment is working, and whether the disease might spread to other parts of the body.The problem is that finding these cells isn’t easy. Most current tests are costly, complicated, and slow. To make things harder, CTCs can change as they travel through the blood, which means some tests miss them completely.The new method developed by researchers takes a much simpler approach. They shine a powerful infrared light onto a blood sample, a bit like the light from a TV remote, just much stronger.Here’s where it gets clever: different substances absorb infrared light in their own unique way. CTCs have a specific pattern, almost like a chemical fingerprint. By using a computer to analyse this pattern, scientists can quickly tell whether cancer cells are present in the blood.For the study sample was taken from a 77 year-old lung cancer patient at UHNM and using advanced scanning technology and computer analysis, scientists were able to pinpoint a single cancer cell among thousands of healthy blood cells with the result independently confirmed by specialist testing.The findings of the study have been published in the Applied Spectroscopy journal.
Lung cancer: New blood test can find cancer one cell at a time |
