Cancer probe distinguishes tumour cells from healthy tissue during surgery

The most crucial role of a cancer surgeon is to remove all traces of a tumour during the operation. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most difficult. Distinguishing between cancerous cells and healthy tissue, especially at the boundary of a tumour, is far from easy even for the most experienced surgeons, and leftover cancer cells can grow into new tumours or spread elsewhere in the body

A team from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) has now developed a device that can be used during surgery to give a rapid determination of whether cells at a tumour boundary are healthy or cancerous, thereby improving the accuracy and effectiveness of surgery and reducing the risk of recurrence of cancer. The size and shape of a pen, the device works on contact using the technique of mass spectrometry; the team therefore calls it a MasSpec Pen.

“If you talk to cancer patients after surgery, one of the first things many will say is ‘I hope the surgeon got all the cancer out,’ ” says Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, a chemist at UT Austin who designed the study and led the team. “It’s just heartbreaking when that’s not the case. But our technology could vastly improve the odds that surgeons really do remove every last trace of cancer during surgery.”