A new scanning method that uses a transparent mouse could improve the way cancer drugs are tested, when detecting tumors that were once too small to be seen.
Professor Ali Ertürk from the Helmholtz Munich research center discovered how to make a dead mouse transparent in 2018. Now, his team used chemicals to highlight specific tissues so they can be scanned in unprecedented detail.
The drugs are often first tested on mice. Scientists say the new scanning method could revolutionize medical research. The Cancer Research UK organization said the new scanning technique has “great potential”. The researchers say the method reveals much more detail than existing scanning techniques..
In one of the first applications, the team detected cancerous tumors in the early stages of formation. Professor Ertürk says this is important because cancer drugs must be shown to kill tumors in mice before they can be tested in humans.
“MRIs and PET scans only show large tumors. Ours show single cell tumors. Current drugs extend life for a few years, and then the cancer returns. This is because the development process never included removing those small tumors, which they were not visible”.
Normally, laboratory mice are induced with cancer and given conventional scans to see how the tumor is progressing. They are then treated with the cancer drug being tested and scanned again to see if the treatment made any difference. Professor Ertürk’s scanning method can only be performed on dead miceto get an idea of how far the cancer has progressed, or potentially whether a treatment worked.
Ertürk made mice transparent after inducing cancer and then scanned them using his new technique. It would only be necessary to make transparent a few mice to test the effectiveness of the drug.
Dr Rupal Mistry, Research Information Manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “This fascinating and unique scanning technique has great potential to advance our knowledge of how our bodies work and what goes wrong in diseases such as cancer.
“While the researchers will only be able to use the technique to examine the bodies of dead mice, it could tell us a lot about how cancer develops in the early stages of the illness. Being able to visualize tumors in the context of the whole body will also help researchers better understand the impact of different drugs and treatments. Technological advances like this are essential to drive progress and hopefully lead to new ways to detect, treat and prevent cancer,” he added.
This technique for studying cancer -research that was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology– is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of ways the new scanning technique can be used to improve medical studies.
It can allow researchers see things they have never seen before. Studies with mice are often the starting point for learning about processes in the human body. But the new technique can be used in any animal.
It could also be used to make human tissues and organs transparent, although it is unlikely that it would be used to make an entire human body transparent in the near future, because there would be no medical advances that could be made from that stage.
To create a transparent mouse, all fats and pigments are removed from its corpse through a chemical process.. ends up looking a clear plastic toy, which is slightly flexible. His organs and nerves are still inside, but they are almost invisible.
While Professor Ertürk developed the process for making a mouse transparent five years ago, the scanning technique takes full advantage of it. He has found a way to add other chemicals, known as antibodies, to highlight the parts of the mouse that he is interested in studying under a microscope.
Different antibodies adhere to different types of tissue and therefore highlight what researchers are interested in looking at. In addition to highlighting cancerous areas, Professor Ertürk’s team has produced a series of videos that allow researchers to navigate through the nervous system, gut or lymphatic system of the mouse.
The scans have several advantages over what is available now. First, researchers can study disease in the context of the whole body, giving them a much greater understanding of the impact of different drugs and treatments.
3D images too are stored onlineso researchers studying different parts of the animal or wanting to do the same experiment can pull information from a library, instead of having to use another mouse. Professor Ertürk believes the technique could reduce the use of laboratory animals tenfold.
The doctor Nana-Jane Chipampe, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, is excited by the prospect of using the new scanning technique to study how cells develop in the human body. At the moment, have to cut fabrics in very thin sections to study them under a microscope. Soon you will be able to see the details in 3D.
“I can’t wait to get my hands on it!she told me enthusiastically. “It has the potential to identify new tissues, cells and diseases that will really help us understand disease development.” His team leader, Professor Muzlifah Haniffa, is producing a map o online atlas of every cell in the body human.
She says the new scanning technique will be useful for all kinds of medical research. “It will certainly accelerate the pace of medical research,” she said. “The combination of these cutting-edge technologies and the construction of the human cell atlas will undoubtedly revolutionize medicine completely”.
* Por Pallab Ghosh
BBC Mundo
