Purdue physicist creates cancer cell motion detecting technology

Purdue University physicist David Nolte has developed technology that can detect motion inside tumors to better gauge the reaction to various drug therapies.

In a nutshell, Holographic Tissue Dynamics Spectroscopy allows researchers to peer inside 3D tumor spheroids. The general idea is that monitoring tumor cell motion can help pharmaceuticals better target cancerous tumors.

Among the key points:

• Nolte's technology creates holograms of a tumor to get a 3D read.
• Lasers enable the technology to see through the tumor and beyond the surface.
• Spectroscopy creates an image highlighting the changes inside a cell. Nolte noted in a statement that:

"Fluctuation spectroscopy breaks down the changes into different frequencies, and we can tell how a cell's membranes, mitochondria, nucleus and even cell division respond to drugs. We measure the frequency of light fluctuations as a function of time after a drug is applied."

• Color mapping and frequency vs. time spectrograms detail how a drug impacts cells.

The Purdue Research Foundation has patented the technology and can license it for commercialization.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com