Testing Chemo’s Effectiveness
Reported April 24, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — A new non-invasive technology may soon help doctors quickly determine if chemotherapy if effectively treating a cancer patient.
Researchers at Duke University developed a technique to examine the patterns in which light bounces off cell surfaces, which they say may be able to assess chemotherapy’s success in inducing cancer cell death.
The researchers treated breast cancer cells in a dish with one of two standard chemotherapeutic agents, paclitaxel and doxorubicin. They then applied light to the cells at various time intervals and observed the way the light deviated depending on the size and shape of the cells through which it passed.
They found that cells that were dying from chemotherapy experienced marked changes both early in the process and then up to a day later in cellular structure that could be captured by the light-scattering technique. In contrast, the cells that were not being killed by chemo displayed early changes but no later changes.
If future studies are successful, this technique could be used as a non-invasive way to quickly determine if chemotherapy is working or not or if the patients would benefit from an adjustment to their therapy strategy, researchers said.
SOURCE: Study presented at the 100th Annual American Association of Cancer Research on April 21, 2009