Avelas handed extra money to develop fluorescence technique

Avelas Biosciences has been given an extra $7.65 million (£4.74 million) in venture finance as it plans to develop a fluorescence technique to identify the spread of cancer.

The San Diego company is engineering an approach that illustrates the spread of cancer to lymph nodes in breast cancer patients, reports Optics.org.

At the moment, surgeons removed these nodes during surgery in an effort to treat primary tumours, before the exercised tissue is sent to pathologists to check if the disease is spreading.

In the event of the cancer spreading, extra lymph nodes may be removed in a second operation, bringing with it risks of side effects, including numbness and swelling.

Jay Lichter, chief executive of Avelas, titled the imaging technique the Avelas Cancer Illuminator, noting it has the potential to speed up breast cancer surgery and decrease the number of times patients are required to go under the knife.

Avelas believes the technology is capable of underlining the increased activity of protease enzymes, which occur in tumours and metastases.

As part of the work, a colour-coded image showing cancerous tissue can be inserted onto the normal surgical view, giving surgeons a "map" of the cancer's location.

"The fluorescent peptide changes color in the presence of pathological protease activity, thereby marking the cancerous tissue," the news provider reported the firm as saying.

Mr Lichter stressed how advances in cancer treatments are essential, despite finances hindering the development of solutions for some companies.

"The medical community is under immense pressure to reduce costs and improve patient outcome. With high surgical procedure costs and operating rooms costs coming in [at] over $60 per minute, it is clear that advances that reduce a patient's time in the operating room are needed," Mr Lichter explained.

Avelas' work follows a study by Research associate Dr Agnes Klochendler and PhD student Noa Weinberg-Corem at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which found that cell proliferation is important in degerative cancers and diseases.

By duplicating liver cells, the experts found a considerable reduction in gene expression.

Posted by Fiona Griffiths