St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has launched a website for published research results from its partnership with  Washington University in the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP). This project aims to sequence the entire genomes of normal and cancer cells from pediatric cancer patients. By comparing differences in the DNA they want to identify genetic mistakes that can lead to cancer in children.

The website, named Explore, is easily accessible and offers detailed visualization of the data that will make it easier to obtain a good overview of all the information. Explore is also designed to make it easier to search published results from the PCGP.

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Based upon the binding specificity of antibodies to target molecules, immunohistochemistry (IHC) has been used in labs for decades to research protein expression, or lack thereof, in tissue samples. It’s a great example of a translational technique that is being used every day in hospital pathology labs around the world to, for example, classify tumor biopsies based on diagnostic markers. This in turn informs the prognosis and treatment options for the patient from whom the biopsy was taken. However IHC remains a tedious process that involves multiple conjugation steps to bind antibodies to and color-code the target molecules; mistakes can lead to over- and under-exposure which renders the sample unusable and inconclusive.

The technique may have just gotten more sensitive thanks to IBM researchers. Reporting in today’s online issue of Lab on a Chip, the team has developed an ultra-miniaturized probe for immunohistochemistry. According to the press release:

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Researchers at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have been investigating the use of a new 3D cell imaging technology called Cell-CT to characterize subtle changes in a cell’s nuclear structure in order to improve the diagnostic accuracy and prognosis for breast cancer.

Cell-CT uses optical projection tomography to render cells in 3D and is developed by VisionGate, Inc. out of Phoenix Arizona. The Cell-CT appears to be in the process of commercialization and its operation is described on the company’s product page and demonstrated quite nicely in the video below.

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We have previously covered Endomagnetics‘ intriguing technology that offers an alternative to radioisotope guided sentinel lymph node biopsy for breast cancer staging. In brief, the current standard is to use injectable technetium (often in addition to a visual dye) to trace the lymph drainage of the breast. By only biopsying the first 1-2 lymph nodes that drain the breast, called the “sentinel nodes,” surgeons can avoid performing a rather morbid and more risky complete axillary lymph node dissection.

Endomagnetics provides an alternative to the radio-isotope guided technique in that they offer an injectable magnetic material, their Sienna+ Tracer, which just received CE approval. By using their proprietary detector, the SentiMag (CE approved in December 2010), surgeons should be able to perform a sentinel lymph node biopsy using the new technology. Since the entire system is now available for the first time we will look forward to more feedback about it.

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Varian Medical Systems, Inc., a Palo Alto, California firm, received FDA clearance to update the control software of the Clinac and Trilogy targeted radiotherapy devices and for the new Pivotal Care Solution for prone breast treatment. This enables a higher intensity dose delivery, up to 2400 monitor units per minute, and better support for treating breast cancer in the prone position.

The technology can now facilitate treating breast cancer patients on their stomachs rather than their backs—an approach that can reduce the volume of lung and heart tissue exposed to radiation during treatment.

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Two months ago we reported on the first ovarian cancer surgeries performed with fluorescence guidance. As described in the Nature Medicine paper, the international team of researchers from The Netherlands, Germany, and Indiana used folate coupled to fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) to make ovarian cancer cells glow so they could be easily identified.

Now, in this week’s issue of Science Translational Medicine, another international team from Japan and Maryland reports their development of a spray-on probe that may provide even better sensitivity and fluorescent contrast than the folate-FITC counterpart. The editors of STM summarize this work well in the following note:

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Translational Sciences Corporation, a firm specializing in the licensing and commercialization of  medical software, has received 510(k) approval from the FDA for its OncoTrac medical imaging software. OncoTrac is designed for quantitatively tracking the treatment response of tumors in accordance with a number of accepted assessment standards.

The software provides oncology practitioners and researchers with a validated means to report accurate measurements of solid and metastatic tumors for both routine clinical practice and clinical trials.

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Kitware, an open-source software development company, has been awarded Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), through a unique joint agency initiative of The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Homeland Security.

The funding will be used to create an augmented reality visualization prototype to improve the safety and efficacy of robot-assisted prostate surgery for those suffering from prostate cancer.  The project is to create a human/machine collaborative system to provide surgeons with an augmented reality (AR) view by fusing pre-operative MRI imaging of the prostate and surrounding tissue with the da Vinci robotic assisted laparoscopic video while compensating for non-rigid prostate tissue deformation using intra-operative transrectal ultrasound.  The AR will potentially allow surgeons to perform prostatectomies with greatly improved accuracy and possibly lead to improved outcomes and fewer complications.

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BSD Medical has received FDA Humanitarian Device Exemption (HDE) marketing approval for its BSD-2000 Hyperthermia System for the treatment of cervical cancer.

The system uses focused electromagnetic energy to apply therapeutic heating to deep-seated tumors that are located more than 3 cm under the skin surface.

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A researcher collaboration between scientists at University of Colorado–Denver and Technion–Israel Institute of Technology has successfully tested a gold nanoparticle (GNP)-based sensor that can detect lung cancer (LC) markers in a patient’s breath. The technology, which we’ve been following at Medgadget for a few years now (see flashbacks below), is able to rapidly identify small molecule volatile organic compounds that might point to the presence of lung cancer.

The team compared the sensor to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry identification finding that the new device provided “significant discrimination between (i) LC and healthy states; (ii) small cell LC and non–small cell LC; and between (iii) two subtypes of non–small cell LC: adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.”

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