Harvard and MIT scientists have developed a carbon nanotube device that could detect single cancer cells, Discover magazine reports on its blog 80Beats . Cancer cells that break free of a tumor are normally very hard to detect, because there are so few of them — usually only several cells per 1-milliliter sample of blood, which can contain tens of billions of normal blood cells. However, detecting these breakaway cells

is an important way to determine whether a cancer has metastasized. Once perfected, the experimental device may also be able to detect viruses such as HIV. Eventually, it could be turned into low-cost diagnostic kits, potentially allowing doctors to quickly determine whether cancer has spread from its original site, Discover says. The researchers published their research in the journal Small .

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Catching Cancer Cells