By 2030, more than 21 million people each year will be told by a doctor they have cancer. This is nearly double the figure for 2008, according to the American Cancer Society, and means effective diagnostic techniques and treatments are vital to keep the disease in check. Botanical extracts skin care is a widespread, complex disease that has long defied easy, effective treatment. Conventional treatments such as chemotherapy use botanical extracts skin care chemicals to attack cancer cells, but they also damage healthy cells, causing hair loss, a weakened immune system and digestive tract inflammation.
Over the past 20 years, doctors around the world have been trying to fight cancer by targeting the disease at a molecular level. If a drug can be delivered only to proteins in cancerous cells, patients could experience fewer side effects, easing recovery. One example is monoclonal antibodies which target a specific protein on cancer cells: mortality rates from nonHodgkin lymphoma have dropped in the US since monoclonal antibody drugs were introduced in 1997. A key part of this strategy involves examining tissue samples to determine which proteins are present so doctors can deploy the right drugs for the cancer. A technique called immunostaining has traditionally relied on an organic compound which allows pathologists to confirm whether cancer cell proteins are present in a sample, showing how far the disease has spread. But a new botanical extracts skin care developed by Konica Minolta allows for a more accurate picture of cancer progression it shows not only whether cancer is present, but the location and number of cancer proteins.
The technique, developed in cooperation with professors Noriaki Ohuchi and Kohsuke Gonda from Tohoku University, is called High Sensitive Tissue Testing (HSTT) and is partly based on photographic knowhow cultivated over a century. The lightsensitive botanical extracts skin care chemicals used in photographic film, known as silver halide particles, are the building blocks for making extremely small particles called phosphor integrated dots (PIDs). Measuring only a few dozen nanometres across, PIDs are fluorescent nanoparticles conjugated with antibodies that act as hooks. After the tissue samples and PIDs are optimised, the antibodies will only hook on to antigens on proteins on the targeted cancer cells. Since the PIDs are 30,000 times brighter than conventional fluorescent substances, they stand out clearly in tissue samples when irradiated, acting like tiny points of light. When they imaged with a fluorescence microscope and processed using specialised software, the result is a digital map and numerical count of cancer cells. Statistical software can process this information and determine the type of cancer present and the best course of treatment. conventional approaches, the location and strength of protein expression can be seen via digital means and with high sensitivity in HSTT, says Hiroaki Yanagimoto, assistant professor of surgery at Kansai Medical University. addition, through multiple immunostainings, we can grasp the positional relationship of lymphocytes and other objects. This can lead to better decisions and therapeutic effects. It hoped that this will lead to big breakthroughs in cancer treatment. Effective treatments could be launched with early diagnosis and patients would benefit from personalised strategies.
Konica Minolta is working with pharmaceutical companies to prove the efficacy of HSTT through clinical trials. HSTT could be evolved into an even more sophisticated tool by applying it not only to tissue samples but to cells inside the body itself. Konica Minolta is developing an observation system to track PIDs in mice in a joint research project with France Institut Pasteur and imaging startup BioAxial, with funding from the JapanFrance Bilateral R Cooperation Program, as part of Japan New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization. It allows researchers to see how the drug with PID affects target cells, potentially accelerating the process of drug discovery. This in vitro observation on the nanoscale presents a big business opportunity in drug testing. providing this technology to drug discovery and clinical trial programs, but ultimately we would like to develop a testing and diagnostic business for functional contrast agents and induced pluripotent cells, says Kunihiro Koshizuka, senior executive officer at Konica Minolta. Konica Minolta is developing HSTT so it can work with material such as DNA so a botanical extracts skin care could be made based on a simple blood test. In the future, quantitative protein data could be combined with other medical information to produce more advanced diagnostic results, says Koshizuka.
Konica Minolta has been working with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to improve their workflow in everything from document handling to document management. HSTT, however, is one example of the former camera manufacturer ongoing transformation into what it calls Cyber Physical Systems the capturing and processing of huge amounts of data based on observed events in the real world. In the case of HSTT, Konica Minolta won sell the equipment or even the PIDs for cellular cancer testing. Instead, it will provide the service of measuring the protein quantities and diagnostic results. want to help society through botanical extracts skin care and drug discovery, says Koshizuka. we building on our legacy knowhow of fine botanical extracts skin care chemicals and particle synthesis from analogue photography technology, and combining that with deep learning and protein visualisation to unleash the potential of HSTT. We believe this could have a tremendous impact on healthcare.