Flow cytometers for counting circulating tumor cells can be both very large and very expensive. Often, though, they’re the only way physicians can keep track of how effective any particular cancer therapy is working. Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology in Mainz, Germany have developed a fully automatic flow cytometer that’s cheap to manufacture and is only about the size of a shoe box.
The device automatically adds the fluorescent dye containing antibodies that stick to tumor cells to the sample and runs it through a special passage where the cells are guaranteed to pass through one by one. A laser shines its light through the passage, counting each of the cells as they come through. This happens about 20 times faster than with existing devices and requires no professional expertise to operate. The individual components of the system are already in existence, and the next step for the researchers is to combine them into a unified prototype.
Source: Fraunhofer…