Five tech-driven cancer care innovations that made a mark in 2017

Tiny devices, big changes

Nanoscale devices are 100-to-10,000 times smaller than human cells. As such, they’re able to gain access to many areas of the body to detect disease and deliver new types of treatments. In 2017, researchers at Rutgers University-New Brunswick invented a highly-effective method to detect tiny tumors using light-emitting nanoparticles, potentially leading to earlier cancer detection and more targeted treatments. This new method, which involves the injection of nanoprobes (microscopic optical devices) that emit short-wave infrared light as they travel through the bloodstream, is better than magnetic resonance imaging and other cancer surveillance technologies, according to a 2017 study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Cancer cells can lodge in different niches in the body, and the probe follows the spreading cells wherever they go,” said Vidya Ganapathy, an assistant research professor at Rutgers’ Department of Biomedical Engineering. “You can treat the tumors intelligently because now you know the address of the cancer.”

Isolate the problem

Experts agree that CAR-T cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy, was one of the most promising advancements of 2017, with companies like Juno Therapeutics and others leading the way.

The acronym CAR-T stands for chimeric antigen receptor therapy. In simple terms, CAR-T cell therapy isolates and extracts a patient’s own T-cells (i.e., the white blood cells that stimulate an immune response). Then, it re-engineers those cells with new proteins that recognize and destroy cancer cells once they’re reinfused back into the patient’s body.

The latest advancements in CAR-T cell therapy include the use of a genomic editing tool called CRISPR (which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) that allows researchers to place the cancer-fighting proteins at very specific genomic locations. In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two CAR-T cell therapies, one for the treatment of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the other for adults with advanced lymphomas. Research is underway to determine whether CAR-T cell therapy, which has been successful in treating blood cancers, is equally as effective for solid tumors. In January, physicians at the University of Pennsylvania announced a clinical trial in which they’ll use CRISPR to modify human immune cells to treat multiple myeloma, sarcoma, and melanoma. China has performed similar studies with promising results.

A fund for transformation

The Cancer Research Institute awarded its 2017 Technology Impact Award to Dongeun Huh, PhD, from the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering, who will receive a $1 million grant to develop a microchip-based research model that mimics human cancer and immune cell interactions. The model will allow researchers to study the interactions between cancer cells and key components of the immune system involved in cancer elimination. It could also serve as a screening platform to test the effectiveness and safety of new cancer-fighting drugs.

Blood tests 2.0

Liquid biopsies assess mutations and other changes in DNA shed from tumors in the blood, providing deep insights into the earliest signs of cancer. In a report released in early 2018, Research and Markets projects the global liquid biopsy market to cross the $5 billion mark by the end of 2023. Currently, North America has the largest market for the liquid biopsy industry, and in 2016, the U.S. FDA approved the first liquid biopsy test for use in cancer. More recently, this revolutionary non-invasive cancer test continues to show its promise as a tool for routine cancer screenings and a potential alternative to tumor biopsy.