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Compound lights up spreading cancer cells
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-09 07:46

A new type of imaging compound can light up spreading cancer cells and may offer a way to track the spread of the disease, Japanese and US researchers reported on Sunday.

They used the new compound to monitor the spread of breast and ovarian cancer cells in living mice, using a tiny camera called endoscope.

"These compounds may allow clinicians to monitor a patient's response to cancer therapy by allowing them to visualize whether a drug hits its target and whether hitting it leads to shrinkage of the tumor," the US National Cancer Institute's Dr Hisataka Kobayashi, who helped lead the study, said in a statement.

Kobayashi and Yasuteru Urano of the University of Tokyo first targeted breast cancer cells with a certain mutation in what is known as the epidermal growth factor receptor or EGFR.

This mutation is targeted by Genentech's breast cancer drug Herceptin. The researchers made their imaging compound by linking a fluorescent compound to Herceptin. It only attaches to living cells, making it possible to specifically find living cancer cells.

Sure enough, they could see breast tumors in living mice, and tumor cells after they spread away from the initial tumor site, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

Using another cancer drug, Roche AG's Zenapax and an endoscope, they imaged ovarian tumors that had spread inside the abdominal cavity of mice.