10 february 2016

A team from the School of Medicine at the University of Duke, in North Carolina (EEUU), has discovered a new injectable solution which turns Cancerous cells into fluorescent marks. This development can enormously help surgeons to completely eliminate a tumor in the first intervention.

The results on the application of this blue liquid, under the name LUM015, have been published in the magazine Science Translational Medicine and the study was possible thanks to the collaboration of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and from the company Lumicell. The product, activated by the enzymes, has been tested in fifteen patients subject to soft tissue sarcoma surgeries or to breast cancer: after applying the blue liquid, the cancerous cells can be detected without side effects. That is, this development does not mean any adverse effects in the tests carried out up to now.

The use of this liquid would mean a complete elimination of a tumor in the first surgery. In most cases, a patient suffering from cancer is subject to a surgery for the extraction of the tumor before starting the radiotherapy treatment, chemotherapy or going through a second operation. With the LUM015 liquid it would be much easier to detect all the cancer cells and eradicate them in the first surgery, thus avoiding the patients having to continue getting treatment and, this way, saving them of suffering this disease.

The University of Duke’s team has been led by David Kirsch, oncologist and cancer biologist at this university. He explains that nowadays, in the moment of the operation and due to the size of the cancer it is possible reviewing the entire surface that is going to be operated in the patients and this results in that possibly another operation is needed. Thanks to the application of this liquid, with an only operation we could see all the cancer cells and, this way, end with them.

The LUM015 continues being evaluated and nowadays its subject of study has increased: it is being tested in fifty women that suffer from breast cancer. It is expected that the results are still as successful as in the previous tests ant that in a few years it can be applied in the common medicine, so that it becomes a great advance in the eradication of cancer.