Russian researchers from the Moscow Physics and Technology Institute (MPTI), the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB), the Bioorganic Chemistry Institute and some other Russian scientific centers have developed a new approach to diagnosis of intestine cancer. Scientists have made a micro biochip with antibodies sensitive to substances that reveal intestine cancer. The development has been described in the Cancer Medicine journal.

"We hope that test systems based on this method will shortly appear in clinical laboratories of this country," - one of the method's authors, associate professor of MPTI Zhanna Zubtsova said.

The bowel cancer aka colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks third in frequency  among all malignant neoplasms, and at the beginning stages the disease develops without any really noticeable symptoms. Five-year survival of patients with CRC, despite all doctors' efforts still makes only 36 percent. Exact and timely diagnostics is necessary for more efficient treatment of patients. Methods of diagnostics now in use are imperfect. Tube assays and in vitro have low level of specificity, whereas invasive methods, such as colonoscopy are traumatic and cannot give a full picture of the disease development and spreading.

New Microchips
Russian scientists have suggested detecting cancer in patients' blood on several various oncomarkers at once, most of which are already applied in cancer diagnosis of cancer. Besides, scientists pay special attention to glycanes - the major biological molecules, such as starch, chitin and cellulose. The point is that cancerous cells develop special glycanes and therefore cancer can be diagnosed through existence of auto antibodies to these molecules in a human body.

Researchers have suggested to look for cancer auto antibodies in blood serum and for this purpose they used microchips of polymeric matrixes with biological molecules inserted in them. Researchers have created a prototype of test system and have tested it on patients. The test has shown that sensitivity of the new diagnostics system makes 87 percent against 21 percent provided by old methods, that is out of 100 patients with CRC the new test will reveal 87, whereas old methods only 21 cases. Accuracy of the new method has made 95 percent against 79 percent typical for traditional methods.