Apr. 30, 2010

Fluorescent Compounds Make Tumors Glow

A series of novel imaging agents could light up tumors as they begin to form - before they turn deadly - and signal their transition to aggressive cancers. The compounds - fluorescent inhibitors of the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) - could have broad applications for detecting tumors earlier, monitoring a tumor's transition from pre-malignancy to more aggressive growth, and defining tumor margins during surgical removal. COX-2 is an attractive target for molecular imaging. It's not found in most normal tissues, and then it is "turned on" in inflammatory lesions and tumors. moreNov. 04, 2009

Developing MALDI Imaging Technology for Cancer Profile

Normal and diseased tissues are complex mixtures of different cell populations. A better understanding of protein expression changes that occur during 
diseases needs sensitive and specific technologies for each of these cell types. Mass spectrometry based tissue imaging (MALDI-MSI) is a newly developed technique, allowing the visualization of proteins, peptides, lipids and small molecules directly on thin sections cut from fresh frozen or fixed paraffin embedded tissues. more