Tech

Live grasshopper brain used to ‘sniff’ cancer


In a recent study with a preprinted paper published in bioRxivScientists offer a novel idea of ​​how a living grasshopper’s brain could be used to distinguish healthy human cells from cancer cells by using neural circuits. of the insects responsible smell meaningful.

Diagram illustrating the principle of chemical detection using live insect brains and sensory antennae.  Image credit: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.24.493311

Diagram illustrating the principle of chemical detection using live insect brains and sensory antennae. Image credit: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.24.493311

If this invention can be applied to actual medical devices, the promise of cancer treatment will be huge. Insects – and not just locusts – have an innate sensitivity to recognize a multitude of different chemicals, and even separate cancer cell lines, so by applying this diagnostic principle, even can even pinpoint a type of cancer.

This study is currently in a pre-reviewed state.

The operating principle of the novel network chemistry detection platform is tied to the fact that different types of cancer disrupt cellular metabolism, leading to changes in the composition of organic compounds. volatile (VOC) exhaled in our breath.

Technically, it is possible to analyze these chemical changes using a fully electronic breath analyzer, or even specially trained dogs. However, the use of live insect brains combined with an electrophysiological recording and analysis platform has certain advantages.

The insect’s neural microchips are essentially a pre-built and extremely powerful sensor that is naturally capable of recognizing and generating neural responses – or ‘fingerprints’ – to with different diseases. And, you don’t need to train insects, unlike dogs.

In this new platform, the full power of a biological chemosensory array (whiskers) and associated neural computation (antennal lobe circuits) for cancer VOC classification is harnessed. Electrodes were attached to the locusts’ brains to measure the insect’s response to gas samples from different cell types. Special and different neural signal profiles are generated for individual chemicals. This is enough to detect oral cancer cells, in addition to being able to accurately distinguish disease types.

This particular study only looked at oral cancer, but the researchers believe that the different markers of VOCs produced could be used to detect other cancers in a similar way. In addition, there is a big difference in patient survival when cancer is found early, For Stage 1 the patient survival rate is 80-90%, this rate usually goes down about 10-20% for Stage 4 cancer.






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