New imaging technique offers breast cancer insights

Scientists have developed an optical imaging technique that can accurately differentiate breast cancer subtypes and detect responses to treatment as early as two days after it begins.

A custom-built multiphoton microscope has been coupled with a titanium-sapphire laser that causes nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide and flavin adenine dinucleotide – two molecules involved in cellular metabolism – to detect changes in the chemical reactions taking place within cells.

This optical metabolic imaging technique allows scientists to see how metabolic activity changes within cancerous cells that are being treated with drugs, making it easier to identify different breast cancer types and chart therapy response rates among animal test subjects.

Alex Walsh, a graduate student at the department of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said: "We are hoping to develop a high-throughput screening method to predict the optimal drug treatment for a particular patient."

NHS figures show that breast cancer is the most common cancer type in the UK, with around 48,000 women contracting the disease in Britain each year.