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Dec 22, 2016

Using graphene to detect brain cancer cells

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Graphene has already proven its importance to brain implants as well as other Synbio technology.


Brain cell culture. Left: Normal astrocyte brain cell; Right: cancerous Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) version, imaged by Raman spectrography. (credit: B. Keisham et al./ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces)

By interfacing brain cells with graphene, University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have differentiated a single hyperactive Glioblastoma Multiforme cancerous astrocyte cell from a normal cell in the lab — pointing the way to developing a simple, noninvasive tool for early cancer diagnosis.

In the study, reported in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the researchers looked at lab-cultured human brain astrocyte cells taken from a mouse model. They compared normal astrocytes to their cancerous counterpart, highly malignant brain tumor glioblastoma multiforme.

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