Oncologists (Cancer specialist) follow variant procedures to detect cancer according to parts of the body. It costs a lengthy period of time to discover cancer cells in an individual. Scientists at the University of Texas invented a pen like handheld device to detect cancerous cells within a very short period. They are calling it MasSpec Pen.
A cancer patient has to go through numerous diagnosis like reviewing health history, Lab (blood, urine, etc) tests, Imaging tests (X-ray, MRI, ultrasound, etc), Endoscopy, Biopsy, and many others. Doctors need to confirm the accurate location of tumors or cancer cells before eradicating the affected cells. Or else healthy cells might get killed alongside tumors. Meanwhile, cancer cells keep growing their network like a Zombie Apocalypse.
- This Pen can rapidly detect cancer affected cells without any harm and that too automatically.
- It delivers a water droplet to a tissue surface to extract biomolecules work as cancer markers.
- Then Transferred to Mass Spectrometer for molecular analysis revealing the result.
Scientists took hundreds of tissue samples from human patients with or without cancer to check the pen efficiency. According to the journal, the accuracy rate is 96%. No mention of this pen being directly tested on living humans has surfaced till now. Although researchers tested on cancer cell infected mice during experimental surgery.
For now, lab tests may show some benefits in the short-term but who knows how much harm they can make in the long run?