Lumicell has developed a handheld device and an optical imaging agent that, when combined, allows surgeons to scan tissue within the surgical cavity to visualize residual cancer cells.
Photo Credit: National Institutes of Health
MIT News recently published an article titled Startup gives surgeons a real-time view of breast cancer during surgery, which describes how an MIT spinout named Lumicell has developed a handheld device and an optical imaging agent that – when combined – gives surgeons a real-time view of cancerous tissue during surgery.
Lumicell received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the technology earlier this year, marking a major milestone for the company and its founders, who include MIT professors Linda Griffith and Moungi Bawendi along with PhD candidate W. David Lee ’69, SM ’70.
The FDA approval held deep personal significance for Griffith, CGR Scientific Director and a two-time breast cancer survivor, and Lee, whose wife’s passing from the disease in 2003 changed the course of his life. The imaging agent used in the technology was inspired in part by Griffith’s work with endometriosis, which invades abdominal and other organs using enzymes similar to those cancers use to invade tissues. Read the MIT News article here.
