Jellyfish tentacles inspire a cancer treatment

LOS ANGELES — Jellyfish have inspired ideas for bird-safe wind turbines and artificial hearts. Now a team of researchers has drawn insight from a jellyfish’s tentacles to design a better way to capture dangerous cancer cells roving through the bloodstream.

Cancer cells are often most threatening when they break off from their original site and start invading other parts of the body, a process called metastasis. To find out if that’s happening in a patient, doctors often look for them in a sample of blood.

Current methods often try to filter these cells out of the bloodstream by running a tiny amount of blood through a channel in a microfluidic device. The channel is coated with antibodies that can latch on to specific proteins on a cancer cells’ surface. But the antibodies are simply too short — just a few nanometers in length — to catch much in the flowing liquid, especially since whole cells can be 10 to 30 micrometers long (a micrometer is 1,000 nanometers).

A study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked to nature for a solution to this intractable problem. Senior author Jeffrey Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University thought about the way marine animals like jellyfish and sea cucumbers use long tentacles or arms with sticky patches to snag tiny prey out of the water.

Thus inspired, they designed a device with long chains of DNA made out of aptamers — repeating, “sticky” blocks of DNA — specially made to latch on to a protein called tyrosine kinase 7, which is found in certain leukemia cells as well as in lung and colon cancers. The researchers also cut the flow surface into a herringbone pattern, causing the flowing blood to swirl around rather than go straight through; that made any cancer cells more likely to get snared by the DNA tentacles.

Karp and his colleagues found they could push fluid through 10 times faster than previous systems allowed. They also showed that their bio-inspired device can catch up to 80 percent of target cells. Scaling the technology up could increase the flow rate 100-fold and make it practical for future use in hospitals.

And since the tentacles can also be severed with enzymes, the captured cancer cells can be freed and recovered in the sample for later analysis, the study pointed out.

Since different aptamers can snag different types of proteins, the technology could prove useful for finding a number of different cancers. It may also be able to capture free-floating fetal cells in a pregnant woman’s bloodstream, the researchers said.

Identifying these metastatic cancer cells earlier would help doctors personalize their patients’ treatment. And for leukemia patients, it could one day help doctors see whether a treatment is working without resorting to painful bone marrow sampling.

—-

&Copy;2012 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

A firefighter stands in silence before a panel bearing the names of L. John Regelbrugge and Kris Regelbrugge during the ten-year remembrance of the Oso landslide on Friday, March 22, 2024, at the Oso Landslide Memorial in Oso, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘Flood of emotions’ as Oso Landslide Memorial opens on 10th anniversary

Friends, family and first responders held a moment of silence at 10:37 a.m. at the new 2-acre memorial off Highway 530.

Julie Petersen poses for a photo with images of her sister Christina Jefferds and Jefferds’ grand daughter Sanoah Violet Huestis next to a memorial for Sanoah at her home on March 20, 2024 in Arlington, Washington. Peterson wears her sister’s favorite color and one of her bangles. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
‘It just all came down’: An oral history of the Oso mudslide

Ten years later, The Daily Herald spoke with dozens of people — first responders, family, survivors — touched by the deadliest slide in U.S. history.

Victims of the Oso mudslide on March 22, 2014. (Courtesy photos)
Remembering the 43 lives lost in the Oso mudslide

The slide wiped out a neighborhood along Highway 530 in 2014. “Even though you feel like you’re alone in your grief, you’re really not.”

Director Lucia Schmit, right, and Deputy Director Dara Salmon inside the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
How Oso slide changed local emergency response ‘on virtually every level’

“In a decade, we have just really, really advanced,” through hard-earned lessons applied to the pandemic, floods and opioids.

Ron and Gail Thompson at their home on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Oso, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
In shadow of scarred Oso hillside, mudslide’s wounds still feel fresh

Locals reflected on living with grief and finding meaning in the wake of a catastrophe “nothing like you can ever imagine” in 2014.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, left, introduces Xichitl Torres Small, center, Undersecretary for Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture during a talk at Thomas Family Farms on Monday, April 3, 2023, in Snohomish, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Under new federal program, Washingtonians can file taxes for free

At a press conference Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene called the Direct File program safe, easy and secure.

Former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Jeremie Zeller appears in court for sentencing on multiple counts of misdemeanor theft Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ex-sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 1 week of jail time for hardware theft

Jeremie Zeller, 47, stole merchandise from Home Depot in south Everett, where he worked overtime as a security guard.

Everett
11 months later, Lake Stevens man charged in fatal Casino Road shooting

Malik Fulson is accused of shooting Joseph Haderlie to death in the parking lot at the Crystal Springs Apartments last April.

T.J. Peters testifies during the murder trial of Alan Dean at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Bothell cold case trial now in jury’s hands

In court this week, the ex-boyfriend of Melissa Lee denied any role in her death. The defendant, Alan Dean, didn’t testify.

A speed camera facing west along 220th Street Southwest on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023 in Edmonds, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
New Washington law will allow traffic cams on more city, county roads

The move, led by a Snohomish County Democrat, comes as roadway deaths in the state have hit historic highs.

Mrs. Hildenbrand runs through a spelling exercise with her first grade class on the classroom’s Boxlight interactive display board funded by a pervious tech levy on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 in Marysville, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lakewood School District’s new levy pitch: This time, it won’t raise taxes

After two levies failed, the district went back to the drawing board, with one levy that would increase taxes and another that would not.

Alex Hanson looks over sections of the Herald and sets the ink on Wednesday, March 30, 2022 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Black Press, publisher of Everett’s Daily Herald, is sold

The new owners include two Canadian private investment firms and a media company based in the southern United States.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.