(HealthNewsDigest.com) - BOSTON-A fundamental strategy in the war against cancer is to catch it early, long before it has spread. Harvard researchers are advancing the timeline for doing this with the development of a hand-held device that can spot signals of cancer in a drop of blood, reports the February 2013 Harvard Health Letter.

Many kinds of cells shed microvesicles, small pouches that pucker off cells' outer membrane. For decades, researchers have ignored microvesicles, thinking of them as a kind of cellular debris. But in the last few years, scientists have discovered that microvesicles contain DNA and other molecules, and that they can be linked to the cell type from which they came. Cancer cells shed a lot of microvesicles. "So you would easily find a million to several billion tumor microvesicles per milliliter of blood," says Dr. Ralph Weissleder, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School.

Until now, finding cancer-related microvesicles required a complicated process that can take days. But at Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Systems Biology, which Dr. Weissleder directs, he and his team have developed a hand-held device that uses a nanotechnology sensor to detect tumor microvesicles in a drop of blood in about two hours.

The technology has the potential to diagnose cancer early. "It's opening new frontiers in diagnostics that can save lives. We're trying to figure out how useful it is for other cancers and diseases."

Such a device could also be used to help determine how well a cancer treatment is working. That's because the device measures also measures the composition of microvesicles, which changes with cancer treatment.

Read the full-length article: "Can we detect cancer earlier?"

Also in the February 2013 issue of the Harvard Health Letter:

• Is hormone therapy safe again?
• The new link between tomato-based antioxidants and stroke protection
• How lasers and 3D imaging are revolutionizing cataract surgery

The Harvard Health Letter is available from Harvard Health Publications, the publishing division of Harvard Medical School, for $16 per year. Subscribe at www.health.harvard.edu/health or by calling877-649-9457 (toll-free).

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