FAST sensor. Credit: Stanford University
Key Points:
- Researchers have developed a non-invasive device that can accurately measure the changing size of tumors below the skin, meaning it can gauge the effectiveness of a potential cancer drug in real-time.
- The device is connected to the skin, battery operated and can beam results to a smartphone app wirelessly.
- The researchers say the device could significantly expedite, automate and lower the cost of the process of screening cancer therapies.
Engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Stanford University have created a small, autonomous device with a stretchable/flexible sensor that can be adhered to the skin to measure the changing size of tumors below.
The non-invasive, battery-operated device is sensitive to one-hundredth of a millimeter (10 micrometers) and can beam results to a smartphone app wirelessly in real-time.
The process for identifying effective cancer drugs is ineffective, difficult and labor-intensive. Few drugs make it to human patients, and the finding new therapies is slow because technologies for measuring tumor regression from drug treatment take weeks to read out a response.
Hence the appeal of the “Flexible Autonomous Sensor measuring Tumors” device, nicknamed FAST for short. FAST can detect changes in tumor volume on the minute-timescale, while caliper and bioluminescence measurements often require weeks-long observation periods to read out changes in tumor size.
FAST’s sensor is composed of a flexible and stretchable skin-like polymer that includes an embedded layer of gold circuitry. This sensor is connected to a small electronic backpack designed by former post-docs and co-authors Yasser Khan and Naoji Matsuhisa. The device measures the strain on the membrane—how much it stretches or shrinks—and transmits that data to a smartphone. Using the FAST backpack, potential therapies that are linked to tumor size regression can quickly and confidently be excluded as ineffective or fast-tracked for further study.
One hurdle the researchers had to overcome was the concern that the sensor itself might compromise measurements by applying undue pressure to the tumor, effectively squeezing it. To circumvent that risk, they carefully matched the mechanical properties of the flexible material to skin itself to make the sensor as pliant and as supple as real skin.
“It is a deceptively simple design,” said first author Alex Abramson, a recent post-doc in the lab of Zhenan Bao at the Stanford School of Engineering and now an assistant professor at Georgia Tech. “But these inherent advantages should be very interesting to the pharmaceutical and oncological communities. FAST could significantly expedite, automate and lower the cost of the process of screening cancer therapies.”
Information courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology.