Study: New Non-Invasive Method for Detecting Skin Cancer Shows Promise

Researchers have developed a non-invasive imaging technique for accurately detecting basal cell carcinoma and melanoma cancers in patients’ skin cells.

To test their technique, the researchers conducted a study including 10 patients with skin cancer and 4 healthy controls. Researchers used endogenous 2-photon-excited fluorescence to monitor the metabolic coenzyme nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) in mitochondria in the lower epidermal layers of participants. NADH was found to be a natural fluorescent, and did not require any dyes to be examined in the patient’s skin cells.
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The technique detected that the healthy tissue had consistent, depth-dependent morphological and mitochondrial organization patterns that varied with histological stratification and intraepithelial mitochondrial protein expression. Conversely, the patterns were not present in cancerous skin lesions.

The endogenous 2-photon-excited fluorescence was able to successfully identified all participants with either healthy cells or cancerous cells.

“Collectively, these results demonstrate that our label-free, automated, near real-time assessments of mitochondrial organization—relying solely on endogenous contrast—could be useful for accurate, noninvasive in vivo diagnosis,” the researchers concluded.

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

Pouli D, Balu M, Alonzo CA, et al. Imaging mitochondrial dynamics in human skin reveals depth-dependent hypoxia and malignant potential for diagnosis [published online November 20, 2016]. Science Translation Medicine. doi: doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aag2202.