By Lauren Gravitz | February 21, 2014 10:54 am
Blood samples are an invaluable tool, but often they’re just the tip of the diagnostic iceberg, something that determines whether additional, more sensitive tests and scans might be necessary. But new technology may make it possible to use individual cells in a patient’s blood sample to get far more specific and actionable information. A technique being developed by San Diego–based Epic Sciences can determine whether a cancer patient is an appropriate candidate for a drug, and even whether the drug is losing its efficacy.
In research presented last month at the Personalized Medicine World Conference in Palo Alto, CA, Epic described how their technology can be used to reliably pick out rare cells from a blood sample. In the case of cancer, these rare, circulating tumor cells could one day tell an oncologist not only whether a patient’s cancer has returned, but also whether it’s growing resistant to the current treatment regimen—something only expensive scans and invasive biopsies can do with any accuracy today.
Catching Cancer Cells...read more at Discover Magazine.