Sydney, (DPA) A dye that gives doctors a diagnostic tool by latching onto cancer cells that are responding to chemotherapy treatment could dramatically reduce hospital stays, Australian researchers said.
Researchers at the Lowy Cancer Research Centre in Sydney say the procedure they have developed is a simple way of telling whether a course of chemotherapy has worked or not.
The centre’s Philip Hogg explained: “We’ve made a compound that when injected into the body, latches onto dying and dead cancer cells and so with this compound, what you can do is have a sort of a non-invasive measure of whether the actual drugs are working or not.”
Hogg said the procedure provided a simple way to assess whether chemotherapy was working or suggest to doctors it was time for an alternative form of therapy.
“This is a potentially very exciting development because what we have to often do now is to give two or often three doses of the treatment over nine to 12 weeks before we can measure any change on conventional scans,” Ian Oliver, the chief executive of the Cancer Council Australia, told national broadcaster ABC.
“If we could determine earlier than that, then I think patients would welcome not having the side effects of the treatment if they knew it wasn’t working,” he added.