SensNews Apr 2017

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Sensor100 April 2017 10
Cancer Could Become asTrivial asToothache
Danny Fortson,Tech Bubble, Sunday Times April 16, 2017
“Cancer could become boring, like going to the dentist,” saidVijay Pande, who heads
the $200m biotech software fund at VC Andreessen Horowitz,“you head in twice a
year to have your blood tested. They may find you have zero stage cancer, you take a
pill and you don’t have cancer any more. That is the vision at hand.”
We are quite a long way from that dream being reality, but progress is being made.
SiliconValley is throwing billions at companies leveraging machine learning to create
diagnostic toolscapable of catching the disease at the outset. For example, Freenome
is develping a liquid biopsy to detect in blood not just signs of cancer but whether it is
malignan or benign, and where it is in the body. Grail (see pevious page) raised $900m
last month to pursue ist cancer blood test.
April 16
Fast Capture of Cancer MarkersWill Aid in Diagnosis
Researchers at Penn State have developed nanoprobes to rapidly isolate rare markers,
called extracellular vesicles (EVs), for potential development of precision cancer diag-
nosis and personalized anticancer treatments.
9 April
Microfluidic Device Detects Circulating Plasma Cells
Engineers at MIT have devised a microfluidic
technique to capture and count circulating
plasma cells from small samples of blood.The
technique, which relies on conventional blood
draws, may provide patients with a less painful
test for multiple myeloma.
April