(AmericanProsperity.com) – In a new cancer breakthrough, scientists have developed a glowing dye that sticks to cancer cells and allows surgeons to see a lot more than they once were able to.
Experts have said that it will help doctors to remove the cells in real-time and be able to permanently remove the disease while also reducing the risk of cancer returning and preventing harsh side effects. The fluorescent dye can stick to any cancer cells no matter how tiny they are, which allows surgeons to see cells that aren’t normally visible to the naked eye.
Scientists at the University of Oxford in collaboration with a biotech company named ImaginAb Inc have discovered this technique. A professor of surgery at the University of Oxford, Freddie Hamdy, spoke out on the exciting discovery.
“We are giving the surgeon a second pair of eyes to see where the cancer cells are and if they have spread. With this technique, we can strip all cancer away, including the cells that have spread from the tumor, which could give it the chance to come back later,” Hamdy said.
In their first test, they took twenty-three men with prostate cancer and injected them with the dye before going through surgery. The dye was able to highlight all of the cancer cells, including those that moved outside the prostate to lymph nodes and the pelvis.
Said Hamdy, “It’s the first time we’ve managed to see such fine details of prostate cancer in real time during surgery.” He continued, “It also allows us to preserve as much of the healthy structures around the prostate as we can, to reduce unnecessary life-changing side-effects like incontinence and erectile dysfunction.”
The technique has not been trialed on any other cancer besides prostate cancer, but it could be modified to highlight any sort of cancer cells. In this case, the dye was attaching itself to a particular protein that was only on the outside of prostate cancer cells, so the same technique could be used for any cancer type in the future.
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