{"id":27990,"date":"2015-10-29T16:07:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T20:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=27990"},"modified":"2016-06-11T12:22:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-11T16:22:00","slug":"trial-underway-testing-breast-cancer-surgical-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=27990","title":{"rendered":"Trial Underway Testing Breast Cancer Surgical Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Breast<\/a>
(National Cancer Institute)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

29 October 2015. An early-stage clinical trial is recruiting participants to test a peptide that illuminates tumor cells to be removed in breast cancer surgery. The study is testing the experimental product made by Avelas Biosciences Inc.<\/a>, a biotechnology company in La Jolla, California.<\/p>\n

The clinical trial<\/a> is enrolling individuals with primary, non-recurring breast cancer, scheduled for mastectomy or lumpectomy surgery at University of California in San Francisco. The study is testing an engineered peptide, a short chain of amino acids, code-named AVB-620<\/a>, which lights up and changes the color of tumor cells to distinguish the cancer from healthy tissue, and make the tumor easier to remove during surgery.<\/p>\n

AVB-620 is the lead product from Avelas’s technology platform<\/a> developing cell-penetrating peptides that act on enzymes produced by cancer cells. The company licenses research on cell-penetrating peptides from the lab of neuroscientist Roger Tsien<\/a> at UC-San Diego. Tsien, a winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2008, studies cell signaling in neuron and cancer cells, responding to engineered molecules, such as those in AVB-620, as well as photochemical manipulation.<\/p>\n

The trial plans to recruit 39 patients at UC-San Francisco and Moores Cancer Center at UC-San Diego. Its main goal is to assess the safety and tolerability of AVB-620, after a single dose of the peptide with an intravenous infusion. The study is also looking for activity of AVB-620 in the body, and determine the dosage needed to generate a fluorescence signal in tumor and lymph node tissue, as well as further image analysis.<\/p>\n

“Currently, surgeons have no simple or reliable way to determine boundaries of tumors in real time during surgery,” says Jasmine Wong<\/a>, a breast cancer surgeon and site leader for the study at UC-San Francisco, in an Avelas statement. “We face a delicate balancing act between removing too much tissue, which can lead to an unacceptable cosmetic outcome, and not removing enough tissue, which means subsequent surgeries will be needed.”<\/p>\n

Highlighting tumor cells and distinguishing them from healthy tissue is the objective of an optical device tested in a clinical trial reported last month. In this case, the trial tested a hand-held wand designed by physician and engineering professor Stephan Boppart<\/a> at University of Illinois in Champaign, and developed by Diagnostic Photonics Inc.<\/a>, a spin-off company co-founded by Boppart. As reported in Science & Enterprise<\/a>, the results show a high correlation between the images from the device and pathologist reviews of diseased and healthy tissue.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/p>\n