MIT engineers have designed a new nanoparticle sensor that could enable early diagnosis of cancer with a simple urine test. The sensors, which can detect many different cancerous proteins, could also be used to distinguish the type of a tumor or how it is responding to treatment. The new diagnostic, which is based on analysis of urine samples, could also be designed to reveal whether a tumor has metastasized. The nanoparticles are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed short sequences of DNA that are excreted in the urine. Analyzing these DNA “barcodes” can reveal distinguishing features of a particular patient’s tumor. The researchers designed their test so that it can be performed using a strip of paper, similar to an at-home Covid test, which they hope could make it affordable and accessible to as many patients as possible.

“We are trying to innovate in a context of making technology available to low- and middle-resource settings. Putting this diagnostic on paper is part of our goal of democratizing diagnostics and creating inexpensive technologies that can give you a fast answer at the point of care,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, Professor of Health Sciences at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

In tests in mice, the researchers showed that they could use the sensors to detect the activity of five different enzymes that are expressed in tumors. They also showed that their approach could be scaled up to distinguish at least 46 different DNA barcodes in a single sample, using a microfluidic device to analyze the samples.

Bhatia is the senior author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Nanotechnology. Liangliang Hao, a former MIT research scientist who is now an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, is the lead author of the study.

Source: https://news.mit.edu/

The U.S. will need to administer 20 million tests for the novel coronavirus each day by mid-summer in order to fully remobilize the economy in a safe fashion, according to new report from a Harvard panel of more than 45 experts in health, science and economics. The figure far exceeds testing recommendations from other health experts. Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has said that the country will need to initially conduct up to 3 million tests per week to reopen. A separate estimate from Harvard University researchers says the U.S. must conduct between 500,000 and 700,00 tests per day by mid-May to begin reopening.

The new report, released by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics on Monday, emphasized the need for a massive scaling up of testing coupled with a robust contact-tracing program in order to reopen the U.S. in a way that avoids future shutdowns. Its top recommendations include a call for the nation to deliver 5 million tests per day by early June in order to ensure a safe reopening of portions of the economy.

“This number will need to increase over time (ideally by late July) to 20 million a day to fully remobilize the economy,” the authors wrote, cautioning that even that figure may not be high enough to “protect public health.”

The value in dramatically increasing testing is it will “prevent cycles of opening up and shutting down,” the authors argued, adding that the testing output will allow the virus to be adequately managed until a vaccine is developed.

“This Roadmap is the only approach to BOTH contain the virus and ramp back up to vibrant economic life. And, in the long term, it allows us to build an infrastructure of pandemic resilience that will serve us well when the next health crisis or disaster hits, while improving community health,” Danielle Allen, director of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, said in a statement.

Source: https://ethics.harvard.edu/
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