NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: A photo of a demo of this procedure for staging
and treating breast cancer is available on the Web at http://www.uh.edu/admin/media/nr/2007/02feb/abrazdeikisph.html.
PROBE TO DETECT SPREAD
OF BREAST CANCER CO-DEVELOPED BY UH SCIENTIST
Device to Locate Magnetic Nanoparticles in Lymph Nodes
HOUSTON, March 5, 2007 – High-temperature superconductors
hold the key to a handheld tool for surgeons that promises to be
more accurate, cost-effective and safer than existing methods for
staging and treating various cancers, including breast cancer.
Audrius Brazdeikis, research assistant professor of physics in
the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University
of Houston, and Quentin Pankhurst, a professor of physics from the
University College of London (UCL), have developed a novel detection
procedure combining nanotechnology and advanced magnetic sensing
based on high-temperature superconductors. Their innovation will
enable surgeons to more effectively locate the sentinel lymph node
– the first lymph node to which a tumor’s metastasizing
cancer cells will drain.
The researchers produced an ultrasensitive magnetic probe to detect
minuscule magnetic fields in the body. The probe is a supersensitive
magnetometer – an instrument used to track the presence of
clinically introduced magnetic nanoparticles. During breast cancer
surgery, a surgeon will inject a magnetic nanoparticle dye, already
approved as an imaging contrast agent by the Food and Drug Administration,
into the tumor or into tissues surrounding the tumor.
Receiving a $250,000 grant to be used from 2004 to 2006 from the
United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry under the UK-Texas
Bioscience Collaboration Initiative, Brazdeikis and Pankhurst were
required to show “proof of concept” by building a device
and showing it worked. An ethics committee in the UK since has approved
the detection procedure for a clinical trial of women undergoing
breast cancer surgery at University College Hospital, London.
Dr. Michael Douek, a London surgeon who specializes in breast surgery
and is a senior lecturer at UCL, is overseeing the trial and used
the probe for the first time in surgery in December. Douek, who
visited Houston recently in preparation for the testing, said that
the ethics committee gave the hospital permission to use the probe
in 10 surgeries and that after a review of those procedures, the
number could increase to 100.
“We expect to start new clinical trials in Japan and Europe
before the end of 2007,” Brazdeikis said. “Our technology
will be extensively validated by different surgeons in various countries.”
Brazdeikis, who heads the Biomedical Imaging Group at the Texas
Center for Superconductivity at UH (TcSUH), said a goal of the grant
was to commercialize biomedical technology developed at universities
through collaborative research. He and Pankhurst, deputy director
of the London Centre for Nanotechnology, have formed a medical devices
company – Endomagnetics Inc. – to bring their technology
to the marketplace and patented the probe.
“The company plans to roll out the production of the technology
in 2008,” Brazdeikis said. “We hope that in the next
two to three years practice assisted with our new probe will become
more widely adopted by surgeons.”
Endomagnetics also already has garnered recognition from such key
world figures as England’s Prince Andrew, his country’s
special representative for international trade and investment, who
highlighted new technology developed by the nanotechnology industry
at the Nano-TX ’06 conference in Dallas. He cited the UH-UCL
collaboration and Endomagnetics’ as an “exciting example
of the early stages of this kind of progress.”
“The partnership has resulted in a technology used to locate
lymph nodes for the staging and treatment of various forms of cancer,
including breast cancers and melanomas, and some of the more disfiguring
and demoralizing forms of cancer,” he said, according to a
transcript of his remarks.
“Although the technology has potential for use in the staging
and treatment of other cancers, including lung and prostate cancer,
the instrument needs to be customized for the type of surgery,”
said Douek, who has advised the researchers from the beginning of
the probe’s development. “We went through a whole series
of different probes during the course of a year. I was interested
in being part of the project because of my interest in magnetic
resonance imaging. This is an extension of that technology.”
A surgeon holds the probe, which incorporates two sets of coils
connected to a sensor. One set of coils magnetizes the magnetic
particles, and the second detects the magnetic response from those
particles. The sensor, known as an HTS SQUID (or high-temperature
superconducting quantum interference device) is located in a cryogenic
vessel on a cart and is submerged in liquid nitrogen that cools
the sensor to 77 K, equivalent to -320.5 F. The system uses custom-built
electronics and software on a laptop computer to give the surgeon
visual and audio feedback while tracking the magnetic nanoparticles
in the body.
“When breast cancer is diagnosed, and a tumor has been located,
a critically important issue is whether the cancer has spread to
other parts of the body – a process that occurs via the transport
of metastatic cancer cells through the lymphatic system,”
Brazdeikis said. “The surgeon looks for lymph nodes close
to the cancer. They are not easy to find. The probe is a tool for
the surgeon to use during the surgery to locate the sentinel lymph
node.”
Existing practice calls for a breast cancer patient to receive
two preoperative injections – a radioactive isotope and a
blue dye – eight to 12 hours before surgery, frequently requiring
hospitalization the night before the operation. Later, in the operating
room, the surgeon uses a handheld gamma probe, aided by the visual
observation of the dye, to locate the lymph node with the highest
radioactivity.
“Surgeons have a very small window of opportunity to locate
the lymphatic nodes that the cancer drains into,” Brazdeikis
said. “Our technology offers unprecedented quality and value
of care benefits to patients, doctors and hospital administrators
over existing procedures.”
The UH-UCL technology allows a surgeon to administer one injection
– the magnetic dye that takes only 10 to 15 minutes to work
– and eliminates the need for a nuclear medicine practitioner
to inject the radioactive material. A patient thus may not have
to be hospitalized while waiting, and the technology eliminates
unnecessary patient and surgeon exposure to radioactivity.
“We introduce a paradigm-shifting new technology for the
staging and treatment of breast and other forms of cancer,”
Brazdeikis said. “It will be very appealing for surgeons to
take this technology into their practice.”
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston, Texas’ premier metropolitan research
and teaching institution, is home to more than 40 research centers
and institutes and sponsors more than 300 partnerships with corporate,
civic and governmental entities. UH, the most diverse research university
in the country, stands at the forefront of education, research and
service with more than 35,000 students.
About the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
The UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, with nearly
400 faculty members and approximately 4,000 students, offers bachelor’s,
master’s and doctoral degrees in the natural sciences, computational
sciences and mathematics. Faculty members in the departments of
biology and biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, geosciences,
mathematics and physics have internationally recognized collaborative
research programs in association with UH interdisciplinary research
centers, Texas Medical Center institutions and national laboratories.
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