Jelly fish glow may help detect early stage cancer

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDNov 2 2010

British scientists have discovered that the luminous cells from jellyfish could help detect tumors deep within the human body.

Researcher Professor Norman Maitland of the Yorkshire Cancer Research Laboratory at York University, feels that this technology could be at least ten times better than CT scanners at detecting tumors. He explained, “Cancers deep within the body are difficult to spot at an early stage and early diagnosis is critical for the successful treatment of any form of cancer… What we have developed is a process which involves inserting proteins derived from luminous jellyfish cells into human cancer cells… Then, when we illuminate the tissue, a special camera detects these proteins as they light up, indicating where the tumors are.” The team devised a harmless virus to carry the protein to the tumor. Once there, the virus multiplies, making more and more of the colorful protein. He said, “When a specially developed camera is switched on, the proteins just flare up and you can see where the cancer cells are. We call the process “Virimaging”.” CT scanners can only detect tumors after several thousand cells have formed but this technique can detect as low as 100 or lesser cancer cells in a tumor he explained.

American chemist Roger Tsien won the Nobel Prize for chemistry two years ago for purifying the protein behind the jellyfish’s glow. Professor Maitland added that this work was inspired by those findings. He said, “When we heard about Dr Tsien’s work, we realized how that advance might be useful in the diagnosis of cancer… X-Rays, for example, struggle to penetrate well deeply into tissues and bone, so diagnosing dangerous microscopic bone cancer is difficult… Our process should allow earlier diagnosis to take place.”

He hopes that with proper funding the technique could be put to use in another five years. Prof Maitland said one problem, however, may be the availability of the specialized cameras needed for the process. At present scientists are already using jellyfish proteins to ‘tag’ genes to learn more about how they work