14 DAY TRIAL // Sugar has high chances of becoming indispensable to oncologists and cancer researchers at some point in the not so distant future.
This is because, according to a team of scientists, sugar can make it easier for radiologists to snap detailed pictures of developing tumors.
In an article published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on July 7, the University College London (UCL, for short) researchers explain that, unlike healthy tissue, tumors have a sweet tooth.
More precisely, they tend to consume much more glucose than regular tissues do. The tumors need the excess glucose to sustain their growth, Science Daily explains.
The UCL researchers used the tumors' appetite for glucose in their advantage, meaning that they toyed with a regular MRI scanner and made it surprisingly sensitive to glucose uptake.
Thus, whenever mice suffering with cancer were given sugar and then placed inside this sensitized MRI machine, their tumors would light up.
This made it possible for the researchers to pin down their exact location and their size. Besides, the images generated by this MRI machine were very detailed, the same source informs us.
“GlucoCEST [glucose chemical exchange saturation transfer] uses radio waves to magnetically label glucose in the body. This can then be detected in tumors using conventional MRI techniques.”
“The method uses an injection of normal sugar and could offer a cheap, safe alternative to existing methods for detecting tumours, which require the injection of radioactive material,” lead researcher Dr. Simon Walker-Samuel explains.
Both Dr. Simon Walker-Samuel and his fellow researchers are confident that this new method of imaging tumors is safer and more cost-effective than the regular radioactive techniques presently used by radiologists.
The scientists are now conducting a series of clinical trials on human patients, and hope it will not be long until the technique is made available to the public.
“Our research reveals a useful and cost-effective method for imaging cancers using MRI -- a standard imaging technology available in many large hospitals.”
“In the future, patients could potentially be scanned in local hospitals, rather than being referred to specialist medical centers,” Professor Mark Lythgoe believes.