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By studying light-sensitive particles that latch onto cancer cells, a biomedical engineering researcher at The University of Texas at Austin and a medical physics expert at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are developing a technique to clarify within one office visit whether someone’s cancer has spread from an original tumor. |
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Photo at left: Assistant professors Stanislav Emelianov (left) and Konstantin Sokolov (right) have received $1.3 million from the National Institutes of Health to develop technology involving a laser and ultrasound that would rapidly locate spreading cancer cells using injected nanoparticles. |
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Photo at left: Assistant professors Stanislav Emelianov and Konstantin Sokolov demonstrate a laser passing through a liquid-filled bottle. The laser light’s ability to also penetrate into tissue is permitting the engineers to use the light to identify cancer cells that accumulate injected nanoparticles. These cells will be identified in structures downstream of a tumor that are the first site cancer cells travel to, with the cells’ presence in them meaning more involved cancer treatments will often be recommended. |
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Photo at left: Stanislav Emelianov from the interinstitutional Biomedical Engineering Department with equipment that is capable of molecular imaging. The costum-designed, combined photoacoustic and ulstrasound imaging system allows the study of nanoparticles that behave differently when exposed to cancer cells. This response change allows the cells’ location to be pinpointed in the first (sentinel) lymph node downstream of a tumor. |
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Figure at left: Cancers cells with gold nanoparticles (left) and cancer cells without nanoparticles (right). |
