'Tumour paint' may help surgeons

It can be difficult for surgeons to identify cancerous cells
A 'tumour paint' could help surgeons remove cancer more accurately and so help prevent the disease returning, US scientists say.
In mice, the paint lit up cancer cells but not normal cells, so it could show surgeons exactly where tumours are.

This will help ensure they do not harm healthy tissues or leave cancerous cells behind during surgery, which could mean the tumours return.

The research is published in the journal Cancer Research.

My greatest hope is that tumour paint will fundamentally improve cancer therapy

Dr James Olson

But UK experts have warned more research is needed to find out exactly why the molecule only binds specifically to tumour cells, and to ensure it is not toxic in humans.

Researchers the Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, developed the paint from a molecule called chemotoxin, which comes from scorpions.

Chemotoxin has previously been found to bind specifically to cancer cells in brain tumour biopsies, but not to normal brain cells, and in the new study they showed it bound specifically to a range of cancers.

Seeing tumours

The paint molecule emits light near the infra red spectrum, and this illumination helps surgeons identify cancerous cells.

Injecting the paint into mice, the researchers were able to light up brain tumours as small as 1mm in diameter without lighting up the surrounding normal brain tissue.

This would be helpful because surgeons currently have to rely on colour, texture and blood supply to tell which cells are cancerous, and these features can be subtle.

But removing tumours accurately is vital, and particularly important in the brain where surrounding neurons must not be damaged, and where about 80% of malignant cancers return at the edges of surgical sites.

Improvements welcome

Author Dr James Olsen said: "By allowing surgeons to see cancer that would be undetectable by other means, we can give our patients better outcomes.

"My greatest hope is that tumour paint will fundamentally improve cancer therapy."

The researchers hope the paint could be used to help remove many kinds of cancer.

They hope paint might be used in patients in as little as 18 months.

Professor John Griffiths, head of molecular imaging at Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute, said a way to improve brain surgery would be "extremely welcome".

"If you could light up the tumour cells by shining an infrared beam on them, it might be very helpful."

Professor John Griffiths

He said: "The big problem with surgery for brain cancer is that tumours can infiltrate normal brain tissue, making it very hard to tell where the tumour ends and the normal tissue begins.

"If you could light up the tumour cells by shining an infrared beam on them, it might be very helpful."

But he said the researchers would need to demonstrate exactly why the paint bound specifically to cancer cells in mice, and prove that it also worked and was not toxic in humans.

Swimmer braves icy waters to make his point

The shy, 36-year-old sole member of the Djok clan and senior custodian of the Koongarra uranium deposit in Australia has decided never to allow the ecologically sensitive land to be mined. Jeffery Lee is not interested in the soaring price of uranium, which could make him one of the world's richest men. "This is my country, look, it's beautiful and I fear somebody will disturb it,” he said, waving his arm across rocky land surrounded by the Kakadu National Park, where the French mining giant Areva wants to extract 14,000 tons of uranium worth more than $5 billion. "There are sacred sites, there are burial sites and there are other special places out there which are my responsibility to look after," Mr Lee said. "I'm not interested in money."


This follows here

Police excuse angry computer user for outburst

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who startled his neighbors when he hurled his computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for disturbing the peace by police who sympathized with his technical frustrations.

Police in the northern city of Hanover said they would not press charges after responding to calls made by residents in an apartment block who were woken by a loud crash in the early hours of Saturday.

Officers found the street and pavement covered in electronic parts and discovered who the culprit was.

Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said he had simply got annoyed with his computer.

"Who hasn't felt like doing that?" said a police spokesman.

While escaping any official sanction the man was made to clear up the debris.

In coming months Google will begin issuing cookies that automatically expire two years after a person visits the website provided they don't return, according to the United States firm's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer.

Yeah -- just about long enough for the user to start thinking about an upgrade