New cancer imaging tool could spot metastasis before it happens|| 21st October 2019|| The Herald

New imaging technology has been developed to help picture how tumors form.

Early diagnosis and treatment of patients with cancer could be helped by the tool which researchers at Edinburgh University used to detect the onset of metastatic cancers – when tumors spread and take hold in new areas of the body.

The scientists have developed a chemical signal that lights up to show previously unseen immune cells called metastasis-associated macrophages, which help cancer cells form metastatic tumors. It has long been known that before cancer spreads from one area to another – often fairly distant from the original cancer source – it sends messenger cells to ‘prepare the ground’. Read more