Together they developed a machine that separates cancer-associated proteins by means of their electric charge, which varies according to modifications on the protein’s surface.

 

Antibodies are then used to identify the relative amounts and positions of different proteins.

 

This technique was able to detect varying levels of activity of common cancer genes in human lymphoma samples and even distinguish between different lymphoma types.

 

“This technology allows us to analyze cancer-associated proteins on a very small scale. Not only can we detect picogram levels - one trillionth of a gram - of protein, but we can also see very subtle changes in the ways the protein is modified,” Dr. Dean Felsher, a member of Stanford's Cancer Center in whose lab the research was performed, said.

 

Currently, doctors don’t know for sure what is really going on in a patient’s tumor when he’s going through treatment. “The standard way we measure if a treatment is working is to wait several weeks to see if the tumor mass shrinks. It would really be a leap forward if we could detect what is happening at a cellular level,” Alice Fan, a clinical instructor in the division of oncology at Stanford’s medical school, said.

 

The scientists are now testing the technique on head and neck tumors.