Targeted detection of cancer at the cellular level during biopsy by near-infrared confocal laser endomicroscopy.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35581212.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-30265-z and PMC identifier 9114105.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Suspicious nodules detected by radiography are often investigated by biopsy, but the diagnostic yield of biopsies of small nodules is poor. Here we report a method-NIR-nCLE-to detect cancer at the cellular level in real-time during biopsy. This technology integrates a cancer-targeted near-infrared (NIR) tracer with a needle-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (nCLE) system modified to detect NIR signal. We develop and test NIR-nCLE in preclinical models of pulmonary nodule biopsy including human specimens. We find that the technology has the resolution to identify a single cancer cell among normal fibroblast cells when co-cultured at a ratio of 1:1000, and can detect cancer cells in human tumors less than 2 cm in diameter. The NIR-nCLE technology rapidly delivers images that permit accurate discrimination between tumor and normal tissue by non-experts. This proof-of-concept study analyzes pulmonary nodules as a test case, but the results may be generalizable to other malignancies.
Medical subject headings
- Pancreatic Neoplasms