NEW CTC MONITORING DEVICE

NEW CTC MONITORING DEVICE
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NEW CTC MONITORING DEVICE
Tumor cells can be isolated to provide information on the response of a cancer patient to treatment and even on the more effective treatment. Scientists have come up with a device that could make it extremely easy to monitor these cancer cells in patients. This device takes the shape of a jelly fish whereby it is made of long strands of DNA that resembles the jelly fish tentacles. The number of circulating tumor cells(CTCs) is very small per milliliter of blood of a patient. This makes the cells extremely rare and difficult to isolate. With this new device, Scientists Karp and Karnik together with their teams are now able to isolate the specific rare tumor cell. This has been made possible by the repeating DNA sequences in the new device that capture a certain protein found in leukemia cells. The tentacles are connected to a micro channel where the blood moves in a circular motion increasing the chances of a CTC being captured by the DNA strands.(Sciencedaily,2012) The jelly fish inspired device is ten times more effective than the previous devices because it captures up to eighty percent of the circulating tumor cells. This new technology is versatile this is because the size of the DNA tentacles can be increased therefore i...