One of the greatest challenges facing a cancer surgeon during an operation is determining where the tumor begins and ends. The surgeon needs to remove as much malignant tissue as possible, leaving few or no cancer cells that might cause the disease to recur.
Currently, that means sending samples to the pathology lab during an operation for analysis, cutting away until the lab reports a clean, cancer-free margin around the excised tumor. But cancer cells are small. They hide. They can be overlooked. Wouldn’t it be great if cancer cells announced their presence, pretty much directing the surgeon where to operate?
Work by Quyen T. Nguyen, MD, PhD, professor of Head and Neck Surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with Nobel laureate Roger Tsien, PhD, professor of pharmacology, is pushing that possibility closer to reality.
Nguyen, Tsien and colleagues have developed fluorescent molecules that attach to targeted cancer cells and literally glow, identifying tissues that need to be removed. The same approach is also being used with molecules that highlight hard-to-see nerves, helping surgeons avoid damaging them.
So far, the work has been limited to successful animal models, but researchers anticipate human trials later this year. Watch a new video about the research, produced by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
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