LSU Researchers’ Handheld Device Could Save 1.4 Million Cancer Surgery Patients’ Lives a Year

 

BATON ROUGE -- LSU researchers have invented a handheld device that can tell surgeons where cancerous cells end and healthy tissue begins. The device reduces the chances of tumors growing back and could save over a million people’s lives a year.

“This is a game changer for oncology surgery. Physicians can see the line between cancerous and healthy tissue in real time and base their surgical decisions on that data,” said LSU Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Jian Xu. “Intraoperative frozen section analysis (IFSA) is now the fastest way for surgeons to find out if they’ve removed all the cancer cells at the outer edges of a tumor, or achieved clean margins. Unfortunately, IFSA’s accuracy can vary widely because of its limitations.”

It takes 20 to 30 minutes or longer to get the IFSA results. This means a surgeon can only biopsy a few spots, adding 20-30 minutes to the time a patient spends under anesthesia. If a biopsy is positive for cancer, the surgeon’s only real choice is to remove more tissue. Having to guess where to stop cutting is one reason that tumor surgery with IFSA may leave cancer cells behind, raising the risk that the tumor will recur. In breast cancer surgery, for example, studies show cancerous cells were left behind up to 60 percent of the time.

Every year, around 9 million people worldwide undergo cancer surgery. A number of studies, including a 2019 paper published in the World Journal of Clinical Cases, show clean margins could increase overall survival rates by roughly 15 percent.

“We expect SafeMargin to save 1.4 million lives annually if the device is used routinely during surgery,” Xu said.

SafeMargin offers other advantages over IFSA, including:

• Accuracy. Tests show that SafeMargin’s overall accuracy rate is 96 percent.
• Speed. Surgeons get the results in seconds, compared to 20 to 30 minutes or more for IFSA.
• Cost. Using SafeMargin costs $100 per surgery. IFSA’s cost is close to $4,200. Replacing IFSA with SafeMargin could reduce cancer surgery costs by more than $36 billion a year.

In addition, ensuring clean margins would also mean fewer additional cancer treatments –additional surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy or medication – would be needed. Around 40 percent of patients with solid tumors see the cancer return in the same area within five years of surgery.

The average annual treatment cost for cancer recurrence is around $30,500. Avoiding additional treatments could reduce cancer care costs by nearly $110 billion each year.

SafeMargin identifies cancerous tissue using Raman spectroscopy. The technique involves shining a laser on the tissue and measuring the molecular vibrations of the light that bounces back. Cancer cells have a different molecular vibration than healthy cells.

SafeMargin is the invention of Xu, LSU Computer Science Associate Professor Jian Zhang, and Drs. Michael Dunham and Andrew McWhorter, professors of otolaryngology at LSU Health New Orleans. The researchers created a neural network, a computer system designed to work like the human brain, and trained it to recognize cancerous tissue using clinical data sets. SafeMargin uses those instructions to analyze and predict whether tissue is cancerous. The researchers first lab-tested SafeMargin on throat cancer but have since successfully tested the device on mouth, breast and pancreatic cancers.

“Theoretically, this device can work with any solid tumors,” Xu said.

“Louisiana has one of the highest cancer death rates in the country, and improving cancer outcomes is an integral part of LSU’s Scholarship First Agenda. Discoveries like Dr. Xu’s could save more of our residents and people around the world from this deadly disease,” said Robert Twilley, LSU vice president of research and economic development.

 Xu has applied for a patent to protect his discovery through LSU’s Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization (ITC).

“We are excited about helping Dr. Xu pursue the commercial opportunities for his invention,” said Daniel Felch, LSU ITC senior commercialization officer.

About LSU’s Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization

LSU’s Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization (ITC) protects and commercializes LSU’s intellectual property. The office focuses on transferring early-stage inventions and works into the marketplace for the greater benefit of society. ITC also handles federal invention reporting, which allows LSU to receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year in federally funded research, and processes confidentiality agreements, material transfer agreements and other agreements related to intellectual property.

About the LSU Office of Innovation & Ecosystem Development

LSU Innovation unites the university’s innovation and commercialization resources under one office, maximizing LSU's impact on the intellectual, economic and social development of Louisiana and beyond. LSU Innovation is focused on establishing, developing and growing technology-based startup companies. LSU Innovation oversees LSU Innovation Park, a 200-acre business incubator that fosters early-stage tech companies, and the Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization, which streamlines the process of evaluating, protecting and licensing intellectual property created by LSU researchers. LSU Innovation serves as the host organization for the Louisiana Small Business Development Center (SBDC) network, which oversees all SBDC services across the state as well as the LSU SBDC, which provides free consulting services to small businesses across the state. LSU Innovation helps Louisiana technology companies apply for seed funding through the federal Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer grant programs. LSU Innovation educates faculty, students and the community on entrepreneurial principles through the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, which trains innovators to consider the market opportunities for pressing scientific questions, leading to increased funding from state and federal grant programs as well as industry partners and licensees.