Scientists developed a microdevice implanted in a tumor would be able to identify, through the release of up to 100 cancer therapies, the top treatment alternative for patients.
US – The new device, which measures less than one millimeter in diameter and about 4 mm in length, was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2016, which took place in New Orleans.
The tiny device is capable of releasing a hundred individual therapies or combinations of cancer and tumor recovery and analysis, where doctors would identify the best therapy for the patient.
The research team has began a clinical trial to investigate the safety and feasibility of placing and removing the micro-device in patients with early-stage HER-2, a gene that may influence the development of breast cancer.
At present, there is approximately 150 drugs approved by the Food Administration and Drug cancer, and you can choose different drugs to treat the specific condition of each patient.
However, patients respond differently to various drugs, none has the same answer response, which is a major challenge to determine which therapy or combination of these is right for the patient, scientists say.
“Being able to identify the right therapy to work optimally in each patient, will be a breakthrough,” said the researchers a the conference whose work has been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The device, which has multiple deposits with individual agents and combination therapies, is implanted directly into the tumor with a small biopsy needle where it remains within 24 hours after which it is removed together with a layer of surrounding tissue.
Then the tumor tissue is analyzed to determine the effect on tumor each drugs and combinations thereof.
The researchers tested the microdevice last year in mouse tumors with 16 different therapies. The results showed that the local reading obtained in a single tumor was predictive to sensitivity of drugs.