Mapping Cancer

Cancerous tumours are more than just blobs of faulty cells. In fact, they're more like rogue organs, corrupting healthy cells and blood vessels as they grow and spread. It's also become clear that there are significant differences between tumours from patients with the same type of cancer, and even within tumours that have spread to various parts of the body in an individual patient. To find out more, researchers are developing a new technology called mass spectrometry imaging, or MSI. Unlike most other imaging techniques, which just show the shape and structure of a tumour and the tissue around it, MSI reveals its molecular makeup – like this image of a bowel tumour showing muscle (blue), blood vessels (green) and cancer cells (red). Mapping tumours in this way might one day help doctors decide on the best way to treat each individual patient and monitor how they're responding to therapy.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image courtesy of Kirill Veselkov and colleagues
• Imperial College London
• Copyright held by original authors
• Research published in PNAS, December 2013