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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
UT developing Star Trek-like device for diagnosing skin cancer
Remember Dr. McCoy in the old “Star Trek” TV series waving a tricorder over a patient and making an instant medical diagnosis or gravely saying, “Jim, he’s dead” ? Name a doctor who doesn’t want one of those.
A team at the University of Texas is developing a pen-shaped probe that is held next to a person’s skin while it emits tiny pulses of light. It could be used some day to diagnose skin cancers, including deadly melanomas.
Assistant Professor of biomedical engineering James Tunnell and graduate student Narasimhan Rajaram, who built the device, are working with UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to make the instrument commercially available. The goal is to diagnose cancers on the spot and avoid wait times and invasive biopsies.
The light at the end of Tunnell’s ‘pen’ changes color when it is moved over cancerous tissue, and while the change can’t be seen by the naked eye, it can be read by an accompanying instrument, Tunnell said.
“We have measured 100 patients so far … and it looks promising,” Tunnell said today. He declined to give data from that study but said the numbers were strong enough to merit an award from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation to continue the development and testing of the device. The school put out a news release Monday announcing that Tunnell will get $260,000 over the next two years to press forward. The release has photos of the device and Tunnell.
The pre-clinical testing is expected to lead to regular clinical trials in humans within two to three years, Tunnell said. If all goes well, the device could be on the market in about five years.
You could say the 23rd century arrived early.
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