Even when cancer surgery goes well, it’s far from guaranteed that all the cancer has been removed. The excised tumor is sent to a pathology lab, which analyzes it under a microscope to estimate how much of the tumor may have been left behind.
And what’s left behind could grow back into deadly cancer, forcing patients into further surgeries, radiation or chemotherapy.
But someday, the pathology lab, microscope and all, might fit onto a computer chip the size of a postage stamp. It could give surgeons the ability to scan for errant cancer cells during a surgery and remove them on the spot.
A team of scientists, engineers and clinicians from UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley recently won an up to $15.1 million award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop such a technology, dubbed VISION (Versatile Chip-Scale NIR-II Imager for Single Cell Intraoperative Optical Navigation). The ARPA-H funding will support the project for up to five years.
One of nine projects funded by ARPA-H’s new Precision Surgical Interventions (PSI) program, and the latest in the Biden Cancer Moonshot, VISION will fuse advances in cancer diagnostics, molecular imaging and optics into a device that fits seamlessly into modern surgical practices.
“Cancer surgeons face a daunting task, trying to safely eliminate as much of a tumor as possible,” said Mekhail Anwar, MD, PhD, project lead and professor of radiation oncology at UCSF. “Finding any lingering cancer cells is like flying swiftly over a dense forest, looking for a single flower hidden on the forest floor.”