How to light up a tumour?

I read recently an article which presents the doctors struggle to detect brain tumours. This article is full of examples of medical cases and methods of detecting tumours. One of them can seem amazing. In this article is a lot of examples of medical cases.

We read that the ancient Egyptians used the red-hot instrument to burn diseases tissues. This surgery is called cauterization. This method was very painful and difficult. Frances d’Arblay, an English novelist was subjected to this surgery. He suffered from breast cancer and she must have had a mastectomy, without anaesthetic. Her doctor warned her that it would be very hurtful. After successful operation, she lived for 29 years.

In 1846, ether was introduced like as an anaesthetic. It was a breakthrough in medicine, because it elimines the pain during the operation. When a patient is unconscious, the doctors’ work is easier.

There are a lot of techniques that help the doctors in the cancer’s diagnosis, for example: ultrasound, X-ray computed tomography scan (CT scan) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They penetrate our body and product cross-sectional images of the part of the body. Thanks to it, a specialist sees what is happening inside our body.

There is a new technique - fluorescence imaging. This technique causes that the cancers light up and the doctors can see them. It is very helpful and promising. Gliolan (5-ALA) is a dye that accumulates in some high-grade gliomas (HGGs). It causes that the tumour cells glow red in UV light. The patients must take it 3-4 hours before operation. In Europe this dye was approved in September 2007, but in the United States hasn’t yet been approved.

Fluorescence imaging can be useful to determine tissue that must be remove and tissue that can’t be touched. This visual aid help chose the treatment, chemo- or radiotherapy. PET (positron emission tomography) came into being. This technique can detect the differences in the tissues on the basic of metabolic change. It can help distinguish the active tumour from passive. This method has the good and the bad sides. Although it is very helpful, it can be dangerous for the children for whom the radiation can be harmful and can lead to cancer in the future.

In 1995, Dr Sontheimer discovered that the substance (chlorotoxin) from the venom of the deathstalker scorpion can be therapeutic. The chlorotoxin causes that the cancerous cells light up. It penetrates the blood-brain barrier and gets to the tumor. The doctors implanted the chlorotoxin in mice. What surprised them was the fact that the chlorotoxin accumulated only in tumours. Furthermore, in an examination turned out that the tumour lights up in combination chlorotoxin with fluorescent molecule. What’s more, the specialists successed in using a synthetic version of the chlorotoxin protein.

This article is very, very long, but very interesting and I recommend it to you:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/how-to-light-up-a-tumour