What if it were possible to find cancerous tumors while they were so small they were really just clusters of hyperactive cells circulating in the blood? (Which is what tumors really are, except on a larger, and scarier, scale.) That's the promise of a new magnetic nanotechnology currently in development as a joint project at Stanford and UC Santa Cruz. Described by the research team as "real-time magnetic nanotag sensing" in a recent paper, the technology uses nanosize magnetic beads as "tags" that attach to multiple cancer-related proteins -- known as biomarkers -- in a blood serum sample. Still in the prototype stage, it's much more sensitive than other fluorescent assays currently being tested, most of which can detect only one biomarker at a time. The research is being supported by the National Cancer Institute's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, an iniative that we hope will deliver on the promise of nanotechnology to catch cancer while it's still curable. Two of the lead researchers, Dr. Shan Wang of Stanford and Nader Pourmand have cofounded a startup, MagArray, to develop the technology. Definitely worth keeping a watch on.
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