Glowing wheat dye may help beat throat cancer
Monday January 16th, 2012
British researchers have created a fluorescent dye that could be used to prevent cancer of the gullet in its early stages, it was announced last night.
The dye will not stick to cancer cells - or those becoming cancerous - but will stick to healthy cells.
The researchers say it can be used to identify Barrett's oesophagus, the pre-cancerous stage of the disease.
They say the technique should be a dramatic improvement on current methods used to screen for the disease which are "costly, uncomfortable and not completely accurate."
Early tests of the spray were reported in Nature Medicine last night.
These involved four patients in Cambridge, UK, and in two cases early signs of cancer were detected that had not been detected using conventional techniques.
In another case a patient had the entire organ removed - but the researchers say the dye showed that only a small area was affected by disease.
The dye works by attaching to glycans, molecules on the surface of cells. It uses a protein from wheat germ - making it unlikely to cause harm to patients.
Professor Kevin Brindle, of Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute, said: “The benefit of using this dye is that it is specific, relatively cheap and is found in our normal diets so unlikely to cause any unwanted effects at the levels we use.
"We now need to test our technique in newly diagnosed patients, but it has great potential to be used with current imaging techniques to help improve treatment for oesophageal cancer.”
Fellow researcher Dr Rebecca Fitzgerald, of the MRC Cancer Cell Unit in Cambridge, said: “Current methods to screen for oesophageal cancer are controversial – they are costly, uncomfortable for the patient and are not completely accurate.
"Our technique highlights the exact position of a developing oesophageal cancer, and how advanced it is, giving a more accurate picture. This could spare patients radical surgery to remove the oesophagus that can result in having to eat much smaller more regular meals and worse acid-reflux.”
She added: "The rise in cases of oesophageal cancer both in the UK and throughout the Western world means that it is increasingly important to find ways of detecting it as early as possible."
Molecular imaging using fluorescent lectins permits rapid endoscopic identification of dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagus. Bird-Lieberman,E.L., et al. Nature Medicine (2012) doi: 10.1038/nm.2616
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