'Chemical Nose' May Sniff Out Cancer Earlier
FRIDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors may some day be able to sniff out cancer with a "chemical nose," a new report suggests.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst say they have developed highly sensitive sensors that pick up subtle differences on the surface of a cell that indicate if it is healthy or cancerous, even whether the cancer is metastatic or not.
The team's report, published online in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the sensors have successfully distinguished between healthy and cancerous human and animal cells, even from the same individual.
"This result is key. It shows that we can differentiate between the three cell types in a single individual using the chemical nose approach," researchers and chemist Vincent Rotello, of the University of Massachusetts, said in a news release.
The sensors use the polymer PPE, or para-phenyleneethynylene, and three gold nanoparticles that tend to bond with the surface of chemically abnormal cells. When an abnormal cell surface grabs on to the gold nanoparticles, the PPE breaks off and glows.
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