eWEAR: New wearable device measures the changing size of tumors below the skin
Meeting Reports
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Nov 15, 2022
The non-invasive, battery-operated device is sensitive to one-hundredth of a millimeter (10 micrometers) and can beam results to a smartphone app wirelessly in real-time with the press of a button.
In practical terms, the researchers say, their device — dubbed FAST for “Flexible Autonomous Sensor measuring Tumors”—represents a wholly new, fast, inexpensive, hands-free, and accurate way to test the efficacy of cancer drugs. On a grander scale, it could lead to promising new directions in cancer treatment. FAST is detailed in a paper published Sep.t 16 in Science
Each year researchers test thousands of potential cancer drugs on mice with subcutaneous tumors. Few make it to human patients, and the process for finding new therapies is slow because technologies for measuring tumor regression from drug treatment take weeks to read out a response. The inherent biological variation of tumors, the shortcomings of existing measuring approaches, and the relatively small sample sizes make drug screenings difficult and labor-intensive.
“In some cases, the tumors under observation must be measured by hand with calipers,” says Alex Abramson, first author of the study and a recent post-doc in the lab of Zhenan Bao, the K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering.
The use of metal pincer-like calipers to measure soft tissues is not ideal, and radiological approaches cannot deliver the sort of continuous data needed for real-time assessment. FAST can detect changes in tumor volume on the minute-timescale, while caliper and bioluminescence measurements often require weeks-long observation periods to read out changes in tumor size.
The non-invasive, battery-operated device is sensitive to one-hundredth of a millimeter (10 micrometers) and can beam results to a smartphone app wirelessly in real-time with the press of a button.
In practical terms, the researchers say, their device — dubbed FAST for “Flexible Autonomous Sensor measuring Tumors”—represents a wholly new, fast, inexpensive, hands-free, and accurate way to test the efficacy of cancer drugs. On a grander scale, it could lead to promising new directions in cancer treatment. FAST is detailed in a paper published Sep.t 16 in Science
Each year researchers test thousands of potential cancer drugs on mice with subcutaneous tumors. Few make it to human patients, and the process for finding new therapies is slow because technologies for measuring tumor regression from drug treatment take weeks to read out a response. The inherent biological variation of tumors, the shortcomings of existing measuring approaches, and the relatively small sample sizes make drug screenings difficult and labor-intensive.
“In some cases, the tumors under observation must be measured by hand with calipers,” says Alex Abramson, first author of the study and a recent post-doc in the lab of Zhenan Bao, the K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering.
The use of metal pincer-like calipers to measure soft tissues is not ideal, and radiological approaches cannot deliver the sort of continuous data needed for real-time assessment. FAST can detect changes in tumor volume on the minute-timescale, while caliper and bioluminescence measurements often require weeks-long observation periods to read out changes in tumor size.
