New nanotech to detect cancer early | Joshua Smith

Summary

This script discusses the pervasive impact of cancer, highlighting the importance of early detection for improving survival rates. The speaker, a researcher, shares their personal journey and work on developing noninvasive, rapid diagnostic technologies using exosomes as biomarkers. Their innovative nano-DLD technique aims to make early cancer detection accessible and affordable, potentially revolutionizing cancer screening and reducing its devastating effects.

Takeaways

• 😢 Cancer is a pervasive and life-altering disease affecting about 40% of people, with a significant portion not surviving.
• 🏥 Early cancer diagnosis greatly enhances survival rates, as seen in breast cancer where stage one has nearly 100% five-year survival rate compared to 22% at stage four.
• 💔 The emotional and financial toll of cancer is immense, with many survivors in the US facing debt and a high likelihood of bankruptcy.
• 🔍 Current cancer diagnostic tools are often invasive, costly, and time-consuming, with some cancers lacking effective screening methods.
• 🚫 The lack of early warning systems for certain cancers means people are often diagnosed at late stages when survival odds are lower.
• 🌟 The speaker has been developing technologies for rapid, early-stage cancer diagnostics to improve treatment options and reduce burdens.
• 🌱 The personal experience of the speaker's wife being diagnosed with breast cancer has intensified the urgency and passion behind the research.
• 🧬 Exosomes, tiny vesicles shed by cells, are being explored as important biomarkers for early cancer detection due to their presence in bodily fluids.
• 🛠️ The speaker's team is developing a nano-DLD technology for automated exosome isolation to facilitate rapid cancer diagnostics.
• 🚀 The nano-DLD technology uses deterministic lateral displacement on a nanoscale to separate cancer-related nanoparticles from healthier ones.
• 🏠 The goal is to make early cancer detection systems as accessible as Henry Ford made automobiles, potentially leading to home-based screening.

Q & A

What percentage of people are expected to hear the words 'You have cancer' in their lifetime?

Approximately 40 percent of people are expected to hear the words 'You have cancer' within their lifetime.

Why is early detection of cancer critical for survival rates?

Early detection of cancer is critical because it is one of the primary factors to improving treatment options, reducing emotional impact, and minimizing financial burdens, and it greatly enhances the odds of survival.

What is the five-year survival rate for breast cancer patients diagnosed and treated at stage one?

The five-year survival rate for breast cancer patients diagnosed and treated at stage one is nearly 100 percent.

How does the survival rate for breast cancer patients change if diagnosed at stage four?

If breast cancer is diagnosed and treated at stage four, the five-year survival rate decreases to just 22 percent.

What are some of the limitations of current cancer diagnostic tools?

Current cancer diagnostic tools are often invasive, costly, inaccurate, and can take a long time to get results back. Additionally, for some forms of cancer like ovarian, liver, or pancreatic, good screening methods do not exist.

What is the speaker's personal motivation for developing early-stage cancer diagnostics?

The speaker's personal motivation for developing early-stage cancer diagnostics was fueled by a deep scientific curiosity and a passion to change cancer statistics, which became more personal when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

What is the significance of exosomes in the context of cancer diagnostics?

Exosomes are tiny vesicles shed by cells that serve as important biomarkers, providing an early-warning system for the development of cancer. They are present in bodily fluids and are attractive for noninvasive liquid biopsies.

What is the problem with the current method for isolating exosomes for cancer diagnostics?

The current method for isolating exosomes, which includes ultracentrifugation, requires expensive laboratory equipment, a trained lab technician, and about 30 hours to process a sample, making it not economically accessible for regular screening.

What technology has the speaker's research team developed to address the limitations of exosome isolation?

The speaker's research team has developed a technology called nano-DLD, which is capable of automated exosome isolation to aid rapid cancer diagnostics.

How does the nano-DLD technology work for separating cancer-related nanoparticles from healthier ones?

The nano-DLD technology uses a chip-based, continuous flow separation technique with tiny pillars separated by nanoscopic gaps. This system divides the fluid into streamlines, redirecting larger cancer-related nanoparticles away from smaller, healthier ones, effectively separating the two particle populations.

What is the speaker's ultimate goal for the development of early-warning cancer detection systems?

The speaker's ultimate goal is to facilitate the automation of early-warning cancer detection systems, making regular screening more accessible and potentially placing such a system in every home, allowing everyone to be tested while still healthy and catch cancer at its first emergence.

Outlines

00:00

😔 The Impact of Cancer and the Importance of Early Detection

The speaker begins by highlighting the prevalence of cancer, noting that 40% of people will receive a cancer diagnosis and half will not survive. The emotional and financial toll of the disease is underscored, with one-third of US survivors going into debt due to treatment costs. The importance of early cancer detection is emphasized, as it significantly improves survival rates, as illustrated by the stark contrast in survival rates for early versus late-stage breast cancer. The current challenges with existing diagnostic tools are discussed, including their invasiveness, cost, inaccuracy, and the lack of screening methods for certain cancers. The speaker introduces their research aimed at developing noninvasive, rapid, and affordable cancer diagnostic technologies.

05:02

🧬 Harnessing Exosomes for Early Cancer Detection

The speaker delves into the science of exosomes, tiny vesicles shed by cells that serve as important biomarkers for the early detection of cancer. They are found in bodily fluids and offer a noninvasive method for liquid biopsies. The challenge of automating the sorting of these biomarkers is addressed, with the speaker introducing their technology, nano-DLD, designed for automated exosome isolation. The significance of exosomes in cellular communication and their potential as messengers of cellular health is explained. The speaker's team is working on making regular screening for various cancers more accessible by developing a technology that could detect cancer at its earliest stages through a simple urine, blood, or saliva sample.

10:06

🛠️ Advancing Automation for Cancer Diagnostics

The speaker discusses the potential of their chip-based, continuous flow separation technique called deterministic lateral displacement (DLD), which has been miniaturized to the nanoscale for automated exosome isolation. The process is likened to traffic separation, where larger, cancer-related nanoparticles are redirected away from smaller, healthier ones. This technology could enable rapid diagnostics by isolating and detecting target exosomes associated with specific cancers within minutes. The speaker expresses a vision of making early cancer detection systems as common as household appliances, allowing regular testing while individuals are still healthy. The personal story of the speaker's wife's battle with cancer reinforces the urgency and importance of early detection, and the speaker concludes with optimism about the future of cancer diagnostics and the hope it brings to patients.

Keywords

💡Cancer

Cancer refers to a group of diseases characterized by the uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells. In the video, it is the central theme, emphasizing its prevalence and impact on individuals and society. The script mentions that about 40 percent of people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, highlighting its widespread nature.

💡Survival Rate

Survival rate is a measure of the percentage of people who are still alive a certain amount of time after being diagnosed with a disease. The video discusses the importance of early cancer diagnosis by pointing out that the five-year survival rate for stage one breast cancer is nearly 100 percent, compared to just 22 percent for stage four.

💡Debt

Debt is an amount of money borrowed by someone that has not been repaid. The script talks about the financial burden of cancer treatment, noting that about one-third of cancer survivors in the US go into debt due to the costs of their treatment, and are more likely to declare bankruptcy.

💡Early Diagnosis

Early diagnosis refers to the identification of a disease at its earliest stage, before it has progressed or caused significant symptoms. The video stresses the critical role of early diagnosis in improving treatment options and survival rates, as well as reducing emotional and financial impacts.

💡Invasive

Invasive procedures are medical tests or treatments that involve entering the body. The script criticizes current cancer diagnostic tools for being invasive, costly, and often inaccurate, which can cause discomfort and delay in diagnosis.

💡Liquid Biopsy

A liquid biopsy is a test that detects circulating biomarkers in the blood or other body fluids, as opposed to a traditional tissue biopsy. The video suggests that liquid biopsies, such as urine samples, could be a noninvasive and convenient method for early cancer detection.

💡Exosomes

Exosomes are tiny vesicles secreted by cells that can carry important molecular information. In the context of the video, exosomes are highlighted as valuable biomarkers for early cancer detection due to their presence in bodily fluids and their ability to reflect the health of the originating cell.

💡Nano-DLD

Nano-DLD, or nanoscale deterministic lateral displacement, is a technology developed by the speaker's team for the automated isolation of exosomes. The video explains that this technology can separate cancer-related nanoparticles from healthier ones, which is crucial for rapid and accurate cancer diagnostics.

💡Biomarker

A biomarker is a measurable indicator of a biological condition or state. The script discusses exosomes as biomarkers that provide an early-warning system for the development of cancer, making them attractive for noninvasive liquid biopsies.

💡Ultracentrifugation

Ultracentrifugation is a laboratory process used to separate substances based on their densities by spinning them at very high speeds. The video mentions it as the current gold standard for exosome isolation, but criticizes it for being time-consuming and requiring expensive equipment.

💡Automation

Automation refers to the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. The speaker's dream is to automate the process of early cancer detection, making regular screening more accessible and similar to Henry Ford's impact on the automobile industry.

Highlights

Cancer is pervasive, emotionally draining, and financially destructive, with about 40% of people diagnosed within their lifetime and half not surviving.

Early cancer diagnosis greatly enhances survival odds, with a stark contrast in survival rates between stage one and stage four cancers.

Many existing cancer diagnostic tools are invasive, costly, inaccurate, and slow, highlighting the need for improvement.

For some cancers, like ovarian, liver, or pancreatic, good screening methods are lacking, often leading to late-stage diagnosis.

The speaker has been developing technologies for rapid, early-stage cancer diagnostics to aid clinicians.

The speaker's personal experience with his wife's breast cancer diagnosis underscores the importance of early detection.

Mammograms offer early-stage screening for breast cancer, but there is room for improvement and benefits for cancers without screening options.

The goal is to develop accessible methods for regular cancer screening, such as a simple urine sample providing immediate results.

Exosomes, tiny vesicles shed by cells, are important biomarkers for early cancer detection and are present in bodily fluids.

The current method for exosome isolation, ultracentrifugation, is time-consuming and requires expensive equipment.

The speaker's team has developed nano-DLD technology for automated exosome isolation to aid rapid cancer diagnostics.

Exosomes, measuring 30 to 150 nanometers, are communication tools between cells and can indicate cellular health.

The nano-DLD technology uses deterministic lateral displacement to separate cancer-related nanoparticles from healthier ones.

The separation process is analogous to traffic separation, with larger, potentially hazardous particles taking a detour.

The technology aims to make rapid diagnostics for cancer as simple as processing a urine, blood, or saliva sample.

Automation of screening processes is key to making regular cancer screening more accessible to the general population.

The speaker envisions a future where early-warning cancer detection systems are available in every home, similar to the automobile's accessibility through the assembly line.

The speaker's wife has successfully overcome cancer, reinforcing his optimism and commitment to making early cancer detection technology widely available.

Transcripts

"You have cancer."

Sadly, about 40 percent of us will hear those three words within our lifetime,

and half will not survive.

This means that two out of five of your closest friends and relatives

will be diagnosed with some form of cancer,

and one will die.

Beyond the physical hardships,

roughly one-third of cancer survivors here in the US

will go into debt from treatment.

And they're at least two and a half times more likely to declare bankruptcy

than those without cancer.

This disease is pervasive.

It's emotionally draining

and, for many,

financially destructive.

But a cancer diagnosis doesn't have to be a death sentence.

Finding cancer early,

closer its genesis,

is one of the critical factors to improving treatment options,

reducing its emotional impact

and minimizing financial burdens.

Most importantly,

finding cancer early --

which is one of the primary aims of my research --

greatly enhances your odds of survival.

If we just look at the case of breast cancer for example,

we find that those who are diagnosed and treated at stage one

have a five-year survival rate of nearly 100 percent --

odds that decrease to just 22 percent if treated at stage four.

And similar trends are found for colorectal and ovarian cancer.

Now, we're all aware that an early diagnosis that is accurate

is critical for survival.

The problem is that many cancer diagnostic tools are invasive,

costly,

often inaccurate

and they can take an agonizing amount of time to get the results back.

Still worse, when it comes to some forms of cancer,

such as ovarian, liver or pancreatic cancer,

good screening methods simply don't exist,

meaning that often people wait until physical symptoms surface,

which are themselves already indicators of late-stage progression.

Like a tornado strike in an area without an early warning system,

there is no alarm to warn,

for the danger is already at your doorstep

when your odds of survival are greatly reduced.

Having the convenience and accessibility of regular screening options

that are affordable, noninvasive and could provide results much sooner,

would provide us with a formidable weapon in the fight against cancer.

An early warning would allow us to get out ahead of the disease

instead of merely following in its relentless wake.

And this is exactly what I've been doing.

For the past three years, I've been developing technologies

that could ultimately aid clinicians

with rapid, early-stage cancer diagnostics.

And I've been fueled by a deep scientific curiosity,

and a passion to change these statistics.

Last year however,

this fight became much more personal

when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was an experience that added a strong and unexpected emotional dimension

to these efforts.

I know firsthand how life-altering treatment can be,

and I'm keenly aware of the emotional havoc

that cancer can wreak on a family,

which in our case included our two young daughters.

Because we found it early during a routine mammogram,

we were able to focus primarily on treatment options

for the localized tumor,

reaffirming to me how important an early diagnosis is.

Unlike other forms of cancer,

mammograms do offer an early-stage screening option for breast cancer.

Still, not everyone has this done,

or they may develop breast cancer

before the middle age recommendation for having a mammogram.

So, there's still a lot of room for improvement,

even for cancers that do have screening options,

and, of course, considerable benefits for those that don't.

A key challenge then for cancer researchers

is to develop methods

that make regular screening for many types of cancers

much more accessible.

Imagine a scenario where during your regular checkup,

your doctor can take a simple, noninvasive urine sample,

or other liquid biopsy,

and present you with the results before you even leave the doctor's office.

Such a technology could dramatically reduce the number of people

who slip through the net of an early-stage cancer diagnosis.

My research team of engineers and biochemists

is working on exactly this challenge.

We're working on ways to frequently activate an early-stage cancer alarm

by enabling regular screenings that would start when a person is healthy

so that action could be taken to stop cancer the moment it emerges,

and before it can progress beyond its infancy.

The silver bullet in this case are tiny vesicles,

little escape pods regularly shed by cells called exosomes.

Exosomes are important biomarkers

that provide an early-warning system for the development of cancer.

And because they're abundantly present in just about every bodily fluid,

including blood, urine and saliva,

they're extremely attractive for noninvasive liquid biopsies.

There's just one problem.

An automated system for rapidly sorting these important biomarkers

is not currently available.

We've created a technology that we call nano-DLD

that is capable of precisely this:

automated exosome isolation

to aid rapid cancer diagnostics.

Exosomes are the newest early-warning weapon, if you will,

to emerge on the liquid biopsy front.

And they're really, really small.

They measure just 30 to 150 nanometers in diameter.

This is so tiny

that you could fit about a million of them into a single red blood cell.

That's roughly the difference between a golf ball

and a fine grain piece of sand.

Once thought to be little bins for unwanted cellular waste,

it has been found that cells actually communicate

by producing and absorbing these exosomes

which contain surface receptors,

proteins and other genetic material collected from their cell of origin.

When absorbed by a neighboring cell,

exosomes release their contents into the receiving cell,

and can set in motion fundamental changes in gene expression --

some good,

and this is where cancer comes in,

some bad.

Because they are clothed in the material of the mother cell,

and contain a sample of its environment,

they provide a genetic snapshot of that cell's health and its origin.

All of these qualities make exosomes invaluable messengers

that potentially allow physicians

to eavesdrop on your health at the cellular level.

To catch cancer early, however,

you have to frequently intercept these messages

to determine when cancer-causing troublemakers within your body

decide to start staging a coup,

which is why regular screening is so critical

and why we're developing technologies to make this possible.

While the first exosome-based diagnostics emerged on the market just this year,

they are not yet part of mainstream healthcare options.

In addition to their recent emergence,

another factor that's limiting their widespread adoption

is that currently, no automated exosome isolation system exists

to make regular screening economically accessible.

The current gold standard for exosome isolation

includes ultracentrifugation,

a process requiring expensive laboratory equipment,

a trained lab tech

and about 30 hours of time to process a sample.

We've come up with a different approach for achieving automated exosome isolation

from a sample such as urine.

We use a chip-based, continuous flow separation technique

called deterministic lateral displacement.

And we have done with it

what the semiconductor industry has done so successfully for the past 50 years.

We shrunk the dimensions of this technology

from the micron scale to the true nanoscale.

So how does it work?

In a nutshell,

a set of tiny pillars separated by nanoscopic gaps

are arranged in such a way

that the system divides the fluid into streamlines,

with the larger cancer-related nanoparticles being separated

through a process of redirection from the smaller, healthier ones,

which can in contrast

move around the pillars in a zigzag-type motion

in the direction of fluid flow.

The net result is a complete separation of these two particle populations.

You can visualize this separation process

similar to traffic on a highway that separates into two roads,

with one road going into a low-clearance tunnel under a mountain,

and the other road going around it.

Here, smaller cars can go through the tunnel

while larger trucks, carrying potentially hazardous material,

are forced to take the detour route.

Traffic is effectively separated by size and contents

without impeding its flow.

And this is exactly how our system works on a much, much smaller scale.

The idea here is that the separation process for screening

could be as simple as processing a sample of urine, blood or saliva,

which is a near-term possibility within the next few years.

Ultimately, it could be used to isolate and detect target exosomes

associated with a particular type of cancer,

sensing and reporting their presence within minutes.

This would make rapid diagnostics virtually painless.

Broadly speaking,

the ability to separate and enrich biomarkers

with nanoscale precision in an automated way,

opens the door to better understanding diseases such as cancer,

with applications ranging from sample preparation to diagnostics,

and from drug resistance monitoring to therapeutics.

Even before my wife's bout with cancer,

it was a dream of mine to facilitate the automation of this process --

to make regular screening more accessible,

similar to the way Henry Ford made the automobile accessible

to the general population

through development of the assembly line.

Automation is the key to accessibility.

And in the spirit of the Hoover dream,

"a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage,"

we're developing a technology

that could ultimately place an early-warning cancer detection system

in every home.

This would allow every man, woman and child

the opportunity to be regularly tested while they're still healthy,

catching cancer when it first emerges.

It is my hope and dream

to help people around the world avoid the high costs --

physical, financial and emotional --

faced by today's cancer patients,

hardships that I'm well acquainted with.

I'm also happy to report that because we caught my wife's cancer early,

her treatment was successful,

and she is now, thankfully, cancer-free.

(Applause)

It is an outcome that I would like to see for everyone with a cancer diagnosis.

With the work that my team has already done

on separation of nanoscale biomarkers

for rapid, early-stage cancer diagnostics,

I am optimistic that within the next decade,

this type of technology will be available,

helping protect our friends, our family and future generations.

Even if we are so unlucky as to be diagnosed with cancer,

that early-stage alarm will provide a strong beacon of hope.

Thank you.

(Applause)