News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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Harvard Researchers Develop Technology That ‘Turbocharges’ the Standard Medical Laboratory Microscope in Useful Ways

Breakthrough method could provide pathologists with a less expensive alternative to high-priced super-resolution microscopes or often-imprecise microscopy software

Intriguing new research has the potential to “turbocharge” the standard medical laboratory microscope in ways that create a “super-vision” capability. This would give pathologists and medical researchers an inexpensive alternative to high-priced super-resolution microscopes or often-imprecise microscopy software.

Seeking a new method for counting molecules in complexes, researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University paired their DNA-powered super-resolution microscopy platform—DNA-PAINT and Exchange-PAINT—with a new procedure called quantitative points accumulation in nanoscale topography—or qPAINT. This new analytic tool can “count different molecular species in biological samples with high accuracy and precision,” noted a Wyss Institute press release. (more…)

Sound Wave Acoustic Tweezers Locate and Isolate Circulating Tumor Cells in Liquid Biopsies; Could Lead to Less Invasive Cancer Diagnostics and Treatments

Pathologists will be interested to learn that this latest version of the acoustic tweezer device requires about five hours to identify the CTCs in a sample of blood

Medical laboratory leaders and pathologists are well aware that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) released by primary tumors into the bloodstream are fragile and easily damaged. Many studies have sought to find ways to separate CTCs from surrounding cells. Such a process could then be used as an early-detection biomarker to detect cancer from a sample of blood.

One team of researchers believe it has a way to accomplish this. These researchers are using sound waves to gently detect and isolate CTCs in blood samples. In turn, this could make it possible to diagnose cancer using “liquid biopsies” as opposed to invasive conventional biopsies.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in collaboration with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) have developed a method for using acoustic tweezers and sound waves to separate blood-borne cancer cells from white blood cells. The research team believes this new device could one day replace invasive biopsies, according to a CMU article. (more…)

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