Two brief cancer: screening and metastases

Gold for ELISA
A team of Spanish researchers, led by the group “Biosensors & Nan bioelectronics” of CIN2 Bilateral (Barcelona) has developed a new tool for cancer detection based on the use of gold nanoparticles. The developed system is actually an improved diagnostic system usual ELISA  using gold nanoparticles to increase the detection sensitivity and reduce analysis time. Clearly, the patient’s cells are grown on a carbon electrode which is then put into contact with specific antibodies coupled with gold nanoparticles. These antibodies can recognize specific membrane proteins that are markers of cancer cells. The quantification of gold nanoparticles, and therefore by extension of cancer cells is based on the ability of gold to reduce protons to hydrogen. With this technique, the diagnosis of cancer is given in minutes and the detection sensitivity is doubled compared to a conventional ELISA.

This work has resulted in two consecutive publications in last December and this month in the journal “Analytical Chemistry” .

The micro vesicles would be responsible for metastasis

According to an article published in “Cancer Research” , metastases would not the result of migration of tumor cells to various organs, but rather the dispersion of micro vesicles capable of infecting stem cells , to transmit mutations and cause their proliferation. The micro vesicles in question (not more than 0.4? M in diameter) are also called exosomes and are therefore able to transform these stem cells into secondary tumors.

Different research groups have participated in writing this article the CIPF-UVEG-Research Center Principe Felipe de Valencia , University Hospital La Paz de Madrid, University Hospital of Albacete, and researchers from Genoa.

The discovery confirms a hypothesis so regularly proposed, that of “genometastasis” which suggests that free nucleic acids in plasma could participate in tumor genesis and development of metastases, in addition to cancer cells moving from the tumor into the site metastasize. And that micro vesicles contain these? Nucleic acids? For the moment nothing proven, but the very small size of these vesicles excluded many molecules, excluding nucleic acids for example!

ELISA: Acronym for “Enzyme-Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay. It is a biochemical technique to detect the presence of an antibody or an antigen in a sample. This technique is used in many tests for diseases such as AIDS or cancer.

A stem cell is an undifferentiated cell is characterized by its ability to generate specialized cells in differentiating itself and its ability to multiply infinitely almost identical.