Cutting diagnosis time

Scientists at

have devised a new low-cost technology that allows thousands of tumour slices to be screened side-by-side, an improvement over current and more expensive methods that can analyse only several hundred tumours at once.

The researchers anticipate that this technology could someday lead to more reliable prediction of patient prognosis and improved selection of optimal treatments for cancer and other diseases.

The new technology, details of which are published in the July 2005 issue of Nature Methods, "may lead to a better understanding of human cancer, as well as other human disorders, because it will let scientists discover and then detect unique biomarkers of disease in patients," says Hallgeir Rui, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of oncology at Georgetown and principal investigator of the study.

Rui and the study's first author, postdoctoral researcher Matthew LeBaron, Ph.D., created the technology, which they call cutting edge matrix assembly (CEMA), to construct what are known in the field as tissue microarrays. This new method can be done by using the tools that are already available in a medical centre’s pathology laboratory, they say.