New Technique Uses Blood Cells as a Sentinel for Diseases Elsewhere in the Body
This interview with a Wyeth scientist is interesting to me mostly because I’m a believer that the future of cancer diagnostics, including theranostics, lies primarily in peripheral bood sample analysis. It’s sounds like such an obvious point, doesn’t it? After all, most routine diagnostics today are done using a peripheral blood sample, so why shouldn’t future diagnostics rely on peripheral blood as well? But it’s not at all obvious. Despite efforts to develop blood-based cancer diagnostics (think CA125, alpha-fetoprotein, HCG, etc), most of the “sexy” research in cancer diagnostics until recently in this field has been in tumor- or tissue-based (e.g. lymph node) diagnostics. Think growing a patient’s melanoma or lymphoma cells in vitro to look for cell-surface markers, for instance. The idea of using peripheral blood, and specifically, components of peripheral blood, such as peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), that represent systemic responses to tumors and metastases is actually rather radical. I intend to keep a very close eye on this emerging field and will report significant advances.
