Novel HoloMonitor method identifies tumor creating cancer cells

Using HoloMonitor®, researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a novel non-invasive method for distinguishing between active and dormant cancer cells.

To become harmful, tumors must develop blood vessels. Conventional methods for identifying cancer cells that promote tumor blood vessel formation are complicated, labor intensive and commonly require expensive reagents. This has led researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital to develop a simple and non-invasive method to distinguish between tumor cells that do and do not promote the formation of blood vessels. The development work has resulted in the video protocol “A Time-lapse, Label-free, Quantitative Phase Imaging Study of Dormant and Active Human Cancer Cells”, which was recently published in the video journal JoVE.

In December 2015, PHI and Boston Children’s Hospital agreed to evaluate PHI’s HoloMonitor technology for applications in cell-based cancer research. For more information regarding this research and Boston Children’s Hospital, see the CEO commentary “No Blood, No Tumor”.