Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Supplies and Components Index
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • MedTech Resources
    • Medtech Events in 2025
    • The 2024 Medtech Big 100
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Subscribe to Print Magazine
    • DeviceTalks
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Educational Assets
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Voices
    • Video
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2021 Winners
  • Women in Medtech
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

New Test Could Tell Doctors Whether Patients Will Respond To Chemotherapy

April 25, 2018 By Purdue University

Less than half the patients diagnosed with cancer respond favorably to chemotherapy, but a new method for testing how patients will respond to various drugs could pave the way for more personalized treatment.

Using Doppler light scattering, like a weather radar, researchers can determine how a patient will respond to chemotherapy even before they begin treatment.

“Doppler weather radar sends electromagnetic waves into clouds, and while you don’t see individual rain droplets, you pick up the overall motion of the raindrops. What you create with this is a 3-D map of cloud motion,” said David Nolte, the Edward M. Purcell Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University. “We’re looking at the motion inside living tissue rather than rain droplets, and we’re using infrared light instead of radar. It’s like watching the weather inside living tissue as the tissue is affected by cancer drugs.”

Tiny chunks of tissue taken from a biopsy are placed in a multiwall plate, where various drugs are applied. Light from an LED shines into the middle of the tissue, and researchers look at the scattered light coming off.

In collaboration with John Turek, professor of basical medical sciences, and Mike Childress, associate professor of veterinary medicine, Nolte has built a library of data to associate various light patterns with the corresponding response of patients to treatment.

The findings, which were published in the journal Biomedical Optics Express, report an 84 percent success rate predicting patient response to therapy in the group’s first complete pre-clinical trial.

The study was performed on 19 dogs previously diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, which is molecularly and clinically similar to lymphoma in humans. The treatment of cancer in dogs is almost identical to treatment for humans, Nolte said. They have biopsies, go through chemotherapy and come back for follow-ups.

The method for testing patient response to therapy, biodynamic digital holography, is currently in clinical trials in human ovarian, breast and esophageal cancer. These trials are proceeding with similar levels of accuracy, Nolte said.

“This could revolutionize the way chemotherapy is selected for patients. Hundreds of thousands of patients per year are given standard treatments, while only 40 percent of them actually respond,” he said. “Currently, there’s no good way to personalize treatment because there’s no evidence-based medicine that doctors can turn to. If our method works in human cancers, it means we can help doctors choose better therapies.”

Attempts to create strategies for predicting patient response to chemotherapy have been made in the past. These older methods broke up tumors into individual cells and re-grew them as 2-dimensional cell cultures. This destroyed the cellular environment in which a tumor exists, which contributes significantly to its response to treatment. By preserving the cancer environment in living 3-D biopsies, Nolte’s team is able to assess how cells respond to drugs in the relevant environment.

 

Feature Photo Credit: Kody experienced prolonged survival following chemotherapy, with help from Mike Childress, an associate professor of comparative oncology at Purdue. This positive outcome was predicted by a novel biodynamic imaging test. Carolyn McGuire, Kody’s owner, is shown here with the two. (Purdue University photo/Kevin Doerr)

“mdo
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest medical device business news, application and technology trends.

DeviceTalks Weekly

See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Medical Design Sourcing
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to our E-Newsletter
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media LLC. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Supplies and Components Index
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • MedTech Resources
    • Medtech Events in 2025
    • The 2024 Medtech Big 100
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Subscribe to Print Magazine
    • DeviceTalks
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Educational Assets
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Voices
    • Video
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2021 Winners
  • Women in Medtech
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe