A new study says an individual’s blood may detect circulating melanoma cells, allowing patients to forego invasive skin biopsies.
According to new research published in Advanced NanoBiomed Research, screening a person’s blood can identify the presence of circulating melanoma cells. Patients may be able to avoid invasive skin biopsies in order to identify whether they have skin cancer by using these tests.
The Melanoma-specific OncoBean platform, coupled with melanoma-specific antibodies, is used in the test. The test, according to researchers at the University of Michigan, can be used not just to identify melanoma, but also to determine whether all cancer cells have been properly eliminated after skin cancer surgery.
“This is the first comprehensive study of circulating tumor cells—or CTCs—to evaluate the efficacy of surgery using microfluidic systems in melanoma,” said first author, Yoon-Tae Kang, adding “including changes in the number of CTCs, CTC cluster configuration, and gene expression profiling.”
The corresponding author Sunitha Nagrath further added: “CTCs have the potential to pinpoint treatment resistance and recurrence, and can be a valuable biomarker to non-invasively monitor for disease progression.”
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