Fluorine highlights early tumors
From Chicago, at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology
A new technique utilizing microscopic, fluorine-packed particles can vividly show small, cancerous growths that don’t appear in standard medical imaging. Finding cancer early can improve a patient’s chances for survival, but small tumors can be difficult to see with scanning techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
For the new tagging procedure, scientists first wrap droplets of fluorine-containing liquids in a layer of fat molecules. These nanoparticles, as the researchers call them, are about 200 nanometers across, roughly one-thirtieth the size of a red blood cell. The particles include surface molecules engineered to bind only with cancer cells. Injected into cancer-bearing mice, the particles selectively cluster onto tumors.