The surgeons in this (somewhat gory, you’ve been warned!) video followed a lighted path to the cancer cells they needed to remove.
Purdue researchers made the cancer cells glow using a dye that stained only the bad cells in the ovaries of 10 women in a small study published on Sunday in Nature Medicine.
Ovarian cancer is notoriously difficult to detect, so if the technology becomes part of regular practice, it could save countless lives. And it could work for 40 per cent of all cancers including lung, kidney, endometrial, breast and colon cancers.
Other methods for making cancer cells glow have been tested, and one even clinched a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
But scientists say this latest effort helps surgeons spot a tumour 30 times smaller than previous techniques.
They induced the glow by injecting the patients with a dye that’s attracted to folate, a form of vitamin B that’s abundant in many types of cancer cells. Using a special camera, the cells appeared as green and glowing patches on a monitor.
Questions for the researchers: After you guys cure cancer, can you make us glow in the dark? Like, our whole body? It could be a fun celebratory thing! And can we have a little remote that we can use to control when we glow? And can we pick different colours depending on our mood, or shoes? Thanks!