科學(xué)家開發(fā)出了一種發(fā)現(xiàn)癌細(xì)胞的技術(shù),，它運(yùn)作更迅速而且比目前大多數(shù)測(cè)試需要的樣本數(shù)量更少。這種他們稱之為診斷磁共振（DMR）的技術(shù)可以讓內(nèi)外科醫(yī)生在手術(shù)和其他情況下用相對(duì)簡單的注射器提取的方法迅速發(fā)現(xiàn)癌細(xì)胞,。
Ralph Weissleder及其同事利用設(shè)計(jì)成與癌特異細(xì)胞表面標(biāo)記結(jié)合的磁納米顆粒標(biāo)記了癌細(xì)胞,。然后可以用一種便攜式的磁共振掃描儀探測(cè)這些納米顆粒，顯示出樣本中的癌細(xì)胞存在于何處以及有多少癌細(xì)胞,。利用這種方法,，這組作者有能力在15分鐘內(nèi)在一份實(shí)驗(yàn)性的活檢樣本中發(fā)現(xiàn)最少2個(gè)癌細(xì)胞。這種速度可以讓病理學(xué)家在手術(shù)中迅速做出切除一個(gè)患者多少組織的決定,。這組科學(xué)家提出,，這個(gè)技術(shù)也可以用于監(jiān)測(cè)原發(fā)性癌癥和轉(zhuǎn)移腫瘤的進(jìn)展以及耐藥性。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦原始出處：
PNAS July 20, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0902365106
Rapid detection and profiling of cancer cells in fine-needle aspirates
Hakho Leea,1, Tae-Jong Yoona,1, Jose-Luiz Figueiredoa, Filip K. Swirskia and Ralph Weissledera,b,2
There is a growing need for fast, highly sensitive and quantitative technologies to detect and profile unaltered cells in biological samples. Technologies in current clinical use are often time consuming, expensive, or require considerable sample sizes. Here, we report a diagnostic magnetic resonance (DMR) sensor that combines a miniaturized NMR probe with targeted magnetic nanoparticles for detection and molecular profiling of cancer cells. The sensor measures the transverse relaxation rate of water molecules in biological samples in which target cells of interest are labeled with magnetic nanoparticles. We achieved remarkable sensitivity improvements over our prior DMR prototypes by synthesizing new nanoparticles with higher transverse relaxivity and by optimizing assay protocols. We detected as few as 2 cancer cells in 1-μL sample volumes of unprocessed fine-needle aspirates of tumors and profiled the expression of several cellular markers in <15 min.
