The test involves spreading cells harvested from the tumor onto a specialized gel that mimics the texture of tissues in the body and measuring how far into the gel the cells embed themselves within two hours. Counting the number of cells, and measuring how deeply they embed into the gel, accurately predicts how likely the tumor is to be metastatic. Cancerous cells will invade the gel to a cell's depth within one to two hours, they noted, making the test fast as well as accurate.
So far, Professor Weihs and her team have successfully trialed the test using pancreatic tumor samples collected from volunteers at the Ramban Health Care campus, and comparing the results to current tests. They found that the results were in line not only with standard diagnostic tools, but also prognosis and patient outcomes. Consequently, they were able to prove that the new test successfully differentiates between benign (non-cancerous) tumors, non-metastatic, and metastatic samples, and at the same time accurately gauged their metastatic likelihood.
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