Early diagnosis of prostate cancer

Treating prostate cancer correctly is a race against time. By the time the patient feels the first symptoms, the disease has already spread. In this context, diagnostic techniques are of fundamental importance: CT, x-rays and magnetic resonance work well, but due to high costs they cannot become routine tests and sometimes they are not even sensitive enough. The idea of the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Technology IBMT is to employ a less expensive and more efficient alternative such as ultrasound ultrasound. The developed device uses a laser light that heats the tissue, expanding it. This generates a pressure in the form of a sound wave, which spreads through the tissue in much the same way as ultrasound and is also sensed in the same direction. The researchers thus combine the contrast of light with the spatial resolution of sound, mixing the advantages of both systems. To diagnose cancer cells earlier and earlier, scholars have used an additional very strong contrast medium that differentiates healthy cells more from diseased ones. This is made possible by the insertion of gold nanoparticles (dimensions in the order of nanometres) which absorb infrared laser light in a higher way than cells. Antibodies are then attached to the gold particles which bind to a particular protein which is present in a thousand times higher number in cancer cells than in healthy ones. In other words, the tumor cells are highlighted and, moreover, it seems that there is the possibility that by further irradiating the tissue with the laser, the gold particles, heating up faster, precisely because of the greater absorption of energy, go to eliminate the diseased cells to which they are bound. If all of this is confirmed, clinical trials could begin within the next 2 3 years.