New Test May Offer Better Cancer Screening

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have developed a cancer test that is so sensitive it can spot a single cancer cell among a billion healthy cells, which may offer a better way to screen for the disease besides mammograms, colonoscopies and other less-than-ideal methods currently used. The test uses a microchip that resembles a lab slide covered in 78,000 tiny posts, like bristles on a hairbrush. The posts are coated with antibodies that bind to tumor cells.When blood is forced across the chip, cells ping off the posts like balls in a pinball machine. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can count and capture them for study. “This is like a liquid biopsy” that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans, said Dr. Daniel Haber, chief of the hospital’s cancer center and one of the test’s inventors.

Currently, there is only one test on the market to find tumor cells in the blood: CellSearch made by Johnson & Johnson’s Veridex unit. But, that test just gives a cell count; it doesn’t capture whole cells that doctors can analyze to choose treatments. The new test’s inventors are partnering with Johnson & Johnson to bring it to market. And, four cancer centers also will start studies using the test this year. Studies about the chip have been published in Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.