Cancer Screening with Jellyfish Techniques

The earlier a cancer is detected, the greater the chances for recovery. Unfortunately, detection of cancer is not easy because the disease is often asymptomatic until it reaches an advanced stage. Luckily, scientists managed to conduct screening technique to study the jellyfish.

As is known, the jellyfish could glow in the dark waters thanks to a particular protein in these marine animals. Well, cell protein that is able to remove this light and try to learn and used to mark the tumor inside the human body.

Cancer cells in the human body quite difficult to detect at an early stage. In fact, X-ray technology difficult to penetrate deep into tissues, especially bone, so the diagnosis of bone cancer that are microscopic rather impossible.

Scientists from the British study the protein in jellyfish that can glow. "What we do is to enter cells jellyfish protein into human cancer cells," said Professor Norman Maitland.

With a special camera, the protein seemed to glow when interacting with normal cells so it can be found in tumor cells where hiding. This method was developed from research conducted by U.S. scientist Roger Tsien, who won the Nobel Prize because it managed to purify the protein that makes jellyfish glow.

Research conducted Maitland is to use a virus that is harmless and is set only to bring proteins into the tumor. Once the virus is multiplying, the protein will be more and more colored. "Once the camera is turned on, the protein will expand so that we see the location of the cancer cells. We call this method Virimaging," he explained.

He added that it has the ability Virimaging 10 times better than CT scans in detecting tumors. However, this screening technique research is still in its early stages so can not be applied to the patient. Let's wait another 5 years.