Prof. Dafna Weiss from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering demonstrated the effectiveness of the technology in predicting metastases based on tissues taken from cancerous tumors
Prof. Dafna Weiss, a faculty member in the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion, presents her first success in the early and rapid diagnosis of cancer and in predicting the development of metastases based on an original technology she developed in recent years. According to her, "the technology I developed will allow the medical team to check, already during the operation or immediately after it, the likelihood of metastases of the tumor in other organs. This is the first time that the technology has been tested on tissues taken from cancerous tumors, and I hope that the successful results will accelerate its translation into clinical uses."
Cancer is an umbrella term for a wide family of hundreds of diseases that have one common denominator - disruption of the control mechanisms responsible for the rate of cell division. The cancerous mechanism converts the normal cell division, which is essential for the existence of the organism, into rapid, wild and uncontrolled division. Since these cells, unlike healthy cells, do not die, the tumor spreads rapidly and thus squeezes and suffocates vital tissues.
A particularly great danger is the spread of metastases - secondary tumors in various organs of the body that originate from cancer cells that have migrated from the primary tumor to other organs through the blood and lymphatic systems. Due to the difficulty of predicting their formation and locating them at an early stage and treating them effectively, metastases are the main cause of cancer mortality. Therefore, the motivation in the development of diagnostic tools that will detect metastases at an early stage and furthermore, predict their formation in advance is clear.
This is the background to the dramatic breakthrough presented by Prof. Dafna Weiss and her research group in the journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering. The original technology developed by Prof. Weiss in the last decade has already been tested before on cells in the laboratory, but this is the first time it has been tested on tissues taken from cancerous tumors removed from volunteers with suspected cancer. The research was conducted in collaboration with doctors from Rambam and focused on the tissues of pancreatic cancer - one of the deadliest types of cancer.
The researchers compared the prediction provided by this technology in the laboratory to the actual clinical development, that is, to the histopathological examination of samples from the patient in the near term as well as to the progression of the disease as actually observed in the patient in the long term. The findings: The technology developed at the Technion provides reliable and trustworthy information regarding the question of whether metastases will develop or if, God forbid, they have already developed. This is a very quick test compared to existing tests - about three hours in the laboratory already today. One of its advantages is that its effectiveness does not depend on early genetic and molecular information about the tumor.
The technology developed by Prof. Weiss is based on mechanical (mechanobiological) measurements of cell behavior from a tissue sample on a dedicated platform, which contains gel surfaces that mimic tissues in the body. This platform makes it possible to examine the various properties of the cells - their shape, the internal arrangement within them and the forces they exert on the gel as part of the infiltration procedure. Prof. Weiss discovered that cells with a high metastatic potential are stronger and therefore manage to put pressure on the gel and penetrate it; Thus, the more cells from the sample infiltrate, the greater the probability that metastases will form.
Based on the metastatic potential of cells in a sample of the tumor tissue, measured by this method, the treating team will be able to tailor a particularly effective treatment to the patient, in accordance with the concept of personalized medicine. This test can of course be conducted at the same time as the accepted standard tests.
In the current study, the success of the technology was demonstrated in breast cancer and pancreatic cancer, and these days the technology is being tested in other types of cancer. The research group is also developing machine learning methods that will bring about a dramatic improvement in the level of accuracy of the predictions and in the near future, Prof. Weiss estimates, the technology will make it possible to predict where metastases will develop, if they develop.
In 2015, Prof. Weiss' technology received approval from the Medical Ethics Committee to conduct research on samples from cancer patients using the technology he developed. The current study is an important milestone in the important research journey of Prof. Weiss. The Elias Foundation for Medical Research, the Polk Foundation for Applied Research, as well as the Bar-Lamsdorf Foundation and the Gerald Mann Foundation participated in the financing of the research.
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"Reliable and reliable information" - what is the difference between reliable and trustworthy?