Researchers at the Centro de Estudios Cientificos (CECs) in Chile and Carnegie's Wolf Frommer have used the fact that cancer cells produce metobolic acid lactate to develop a way to detect the cancerous cells.
Until now, there has been no way to detect lactate in a non-invasive way, in real time at the single cell level.
“Over the last decade, the Frommer lab at Carnegie has pioneered the use of Forster Resonance Energy Transfer, or FRET, sensors to measure the concentration and flow of sugars in individual cells with a simple fluorescent color change. This has started to revolutionize the field of cell metabolism,” explains CECs researcher Alejandro San Martin, lead author of the article. “Using the same underlying physical principle and inspired by the sugar sensors, we have now invented a new type of sensor based on a transcriptional factor. A molecule that normally helps bacteria to adapt to its environment has now been tricked into measuring lactate for us.”
Until now, there has been no way to detect lactate in a non-invasive way, in real time at the single cell level.
“Over the last decade, the Frommer lab at Carnegie has pioneered the use of Forster Resonance Energy Transfer, or FRET, sensors to measure the concentration and flow of sugars in individual cells with a simple fluorescent color change. This has started to revolutionize the field of cell metabolism,” explains CECs researcher Alejandro San Martin, lead author of the article. “Using the same underlying physical principle and inspired by the sugar sensors, we have now invented a new type of sensor based on a transcriptional factor. A molecule that normally helps bacteria to adapt to its environment has now been tricked into measuring lactate for us.”
Leader of the project Felipe Barros explains, "standard methods to measure lactate are based on reactions among enzymes, which require a large number of cells in complex cell mixtures. This makes it difficult or even impossible to see how different types of cells are acting when cancerous. Our new technique lets us measure the metabolism of individual cells, giving us a new window for understanding how different cancers operate. An important advantage of this technique is that it may be used in high-throughput format, as required for drug development.”
For the full article, visit http://www.aalatimes.com/2013/03/15/new-cancer-diagnostic-technique-debuts/.
For the full article, visit http://www.aalatimes.com/2013/03/15/new-cancer-diagnostic-technique-debuts/.
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