The wire catches breakaway tumour cells using the same mechanism as fridge magnets

A magnetic wire used to snag scarce and hard-to-capture tumor cells could prove to be a swift and effective tactic for early cancer detection.

According to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, breakaway cells from a tumour anywhere in the body get attracted to the wire.

It is threaded into a vein and attracts special magnetic nanoparticles engineered to glom onto tumor cells that may be roaming the bloodstream. With these tumor cells essentially magnetized, the wire can lure the cells out of the free-flowing bloodstream using the same force that holds family photos to your refrigerator.

The technique, which has only been used in pigs so far, attracts from 10-80 times more tumor cells than current blood-based cancer-detection methods. It is a potent tool to catch the disease earlier.

The technique could even help doctors evaluate a patient’s response to particular cancer treatments: if the therapy is working, tumor-cell levels in the blood should rise as the cells die and break away from the tumor, and then fall as the tumor shrinks.

With these tumor cells essentially magnetized, the wire can lure the cells out of the free-flowing bloodstream using the same force that holds family photos to your refrigerator

For now, Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, professor and chair of radiology and director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection, is focused on the wire as a cancer-detection method, but its reach could be much broader.

“It could be useful in any other disease in which there are cells or molecules of interest in the blood,” said Gambhir, who developed the wire with the help of his colleagues. “For example, let’s say you’re checking for a bacterial infection, circulating tumor DNA or rare cells that are responsible for inflammation in any of these scenarios, the wire and nanoparticles help to enrich the signal, and therefore detect the disease or infection.”

The study was published online July 16 in Nature Biomedical Engineering.