Virtual Medical Centre

New implantable device could track tumour's growth

Monitoring a tumour for weeks or months after the biopsy, tracking its growth and how it responds to treatment, would be much more valuable, says Michael Cima, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who has developed the first implantable device that can do just that.

Cima and his colleagues recently reported that their device successfully tracked a tumour marker in mice for one month. The work is described in a paper published online in the journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics.

Such implants could one day provide up-to-the-minute information about what a tumour is doing – whether it is growing or shrinking, how it's responding to treatment, and whether it has metastasised or is about to do so.

"What this does is basically take the lab and put it in the patient," said Cima, who is also an investigator at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

The devices, which could be implanted at the time of biopsy, could also be tailored to monitor chemotherapy agents, allowing doctors to determine whether cancer drugs are reaching the tumours. They can also be designed to measure pH (acidity) or oxygen levels, which reveal tumour metabolism and how it is responding to therapy.

With current tools for detecting whether a tumour has spread, such as biopsy, by the time you have test results it's too late to prevent metastasis, said Cima.