Italian inventors have developed new technology that analyses cancer cells one by one to help establish the most suitable form of treatment for patients.
The technology, developed by diagnostics company Silicon Biosystems Menarini and presented in Nature's Scientific Reports, allows medics to analyse cancer cells as if they were digital pixels, map their genome and compare them with healthy cells present in a biopsy, said inventor Gianni Medoro.
Nicolò Manaresi, Chief Scientific Officer for Silicon Biosystems, said that normally in about one in six patients the percentage of cancerous cells in a biopsy is too low to make a reliable judgement about the genetic characteristics of the tumour, which is needed for accurate therapy.
"Thanks to our technology…each cell becomes a pixel that can be followed and analysed, an extremely precise analysis, allowing us to eliminate the inevitable 'background noise' present when cancer cells are few or not all have the same mutations," Manaresi said.
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