Scientists have developed a wearable device that can continuously collect live cancer cells directly from a patient’s blood, paving the way for doctors to diagnose cancer without conducting biopsies. Some blood draws come back with no cancer cells, even in patients with advanced cancer, and a typical sample contains no more than 10 cancer cells. AdvertisingOver a couple of hours in the hospital, the device could continuously capture cancer cells directly from the vein, screening much larger volumes of a patient’s blood. In animal tests, the cell-grabbing chip in the wearable device trapped 3.5 times as many cancer cells per millilitre of blood as it did running samples collected by blood draw. This means, cancer cells captured from blood could provide better information for planning treatments than those from a conventional biopsy.

Source: Indian Express April 02, 2019 05:15 UTC