Biomagnetics developed for use in new breast cancer tests

Data recorded on a test sample comprising 1 ìg of iron per square mm, illustrating the sensitivity (ca. 10 ng per square mm) and spatial resolution (ca. 1 mm) of... Click here for more information.

A team from UCL has developed a new medical device which will make the early detection of breast cancer more cost effective and easier to administer. The team - which won a prestigious Brian Mercer Feasibility Award from the Royal Society yesterday - plans to use magnetic nanoparticles and an extremely sensitive magnetometer called the ‘HistoMag’ to detect cancerous cells in samples of breast tissue.

“Each year 35,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK and the testing programme is a massive undertaking,” says Professor Quentin Pankhurst of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the UCL Department of Physics & Astronomy. “Until now, pathologists had to stain tissue samples with brown dyes to help them determine whether they were normal or cancerous. In terms of streamlining the process, the main problem is that all of the results are open to interpretation and each test has to be individually checked by a specialist.

Schematic of the HistoMag magnetic microscope. The arrow points to a glass slide for mounting biopsy tissue. Click here for more information.

“At UCL we’ve been working in the relatively new area of biomagnetics to develop a technique which provides more quantitative and reliable results, whilst also enabling pathologists to identify abnormal tissue sections much more quickly.