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Bioengineering
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Novel, Low Cost Technologies for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics
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Novel, Low Cost Technologies for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics

A special issue of Bioengineering (ISSN 2306-5354). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2024 | Viewed by 4574

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Brian T. Crouch

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Interests: low cost cancer therapies; ablative therapies; point-of-care technologies for women’s health; women’s cancers; low cost diagnostics; optical point-of-care technologies
Dr. Jenna Mueller

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Interests: biomedical devices for global health; optical imaging; image processing; ablative therapies; cervical cancer; human-centered design

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Advances in technologies for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics have resulted in early detection and significantly lengthened survival rates; however, these improvements are not universal. Countries with low human development indices (HDIs) are frequently left behind, with only the most basic healthcare tools available. There has been a paradigm shift towards developing point-of-care technologies targeted at impacting the healthcare ecosystems that exist in lower-HDI settings rather than waiting for existing technologies to “trickle down” from countries with a higher HDI.

This Special Issue will focus on new technologies developed for cancer diagnosis and therapy, with emphasis on low-cost point-of-care devices and therapeutic strategies. Diagnostic devices may include (but are not limited to) lateral flow assays, microfluidics, biosensors, optical imaging, and ultrasound. Therapeutics include (but are not limited to) alternatives or adjuncts to surgery, chemotherapy, drug delivery, immunotherapy, and ablation. Research exploring machine learning techniques for improving cancer diagnosis and therapy are also permitted. Papers combining diagnostics and therapeutics into “see and treat” paradigms are highly encouraged. 

Dr. Brian T. Crouch
Dr. Jenna Mueller
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Bioengineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • low-cost cancer diagnostics
  • low-cost cancer therapeutics
  • point-of-care technology
  • see and treat
  • global health

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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15 pages, 26642 KiB  
Article
Design and Evaluation of ScanCap: A Low-Cost, Reusable Tethered Capsule Endoscope with Blue-Green Illumination Imaging for Unsedated Screening and Early Detection of Barrett’s Esophagus
by Cheima Hicheri, Ahad M. Azimuddin, Alex Kortum, Joseph Bailey, Yubo Tang, Richard A. Schwarz, Daniel Rosen, Shilpa Jain, Nabil M. Mansour, Shawn Groth, Shaleen Vasavada, Ashwin Rao, Adrianna Maliga, Leslie Gallego, Jennifer Carns, Sharmila Anandasabapathy and Rebecca Richards-Kortum
Bioengineering 2024, 11(6), 557; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering11060557 - 31 May 2024
Viewed by 938
Abstract
Esophageal carcinoma is the sixth-leading cause of cancer death worldwide. A precursor to esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is Barrett’s Esophagus (BE). Early-stage diagnosis and treatment of esophageal neoplasia (Barrett’s with high-grade dysplasia/intramucosal cancer) increase the five-year survival rate from 10% to 98%. BE is [...] Read more.
Esophageal carcinoma is the sixth-leading cause of cancer death worldwide. A precursor to esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is Barrett’s Esophagus (BE). Early-stage diagnosis and treatment of esophageal neoplasia (Barrett’s with high-grade dysplasia/intramucosal cancer) increase the five-year survival rate from 10% to 98%. BE is a global challenge; however, current endoscopes for early BE detection are costly and require extensive infrastructure for patient examination and sedation. We describe the design and evaluation of the first prototype of ScanCap, a high-resolution optical endoscopy system with a reusable, low-cost tethered capsule, designed to provide high-definition, blue-green illumination imaging for the early detection of BE in unsedated patients. The tethered capsule (12.8 mm diameter, 35.5 mm length) contains a color camera and rotating mirror and is designed to be swallowed; images are collected as the capsule is retracted manually via the tether. The tether provides electrical power and illumination at wavelengths of 415 nm and 565 nm and transmits data from the camera to a tablet. The ScanCap prototype capsule was used to image the oral mucosa in normal volunteers and ex vivo esophageal resections; images were compared to those obtained using an Olympus CV-180 endoscope. Images of superficial capillaries in intact oral mucosa were clearly visible in ScanCap images. Diagnostically relevant features of BE, including irregular Z-lines, distorted mucosa, and dilated vasculature, were clearly visible in ScanCap images of ex vivo esophageal specimens. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel, Low Cost Technologies for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics)
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16 pages, 3827 KiB  
Article
Thermal Characterization and Preclinical Feasibility Verification of an Accessible, Carbon Dioxide-Based Cryotherapy System
by Yixin Hu, Naomi Gordon, Katherine Ogg, Dara L. Kraitchman, Nicholas J. Durr and Bailey Surtees
Bioengineering 2024, 11(4), 391; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering11040391 - 18 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1265
Abstract
To investigate the potential of an affordable cryotherapy device for the accessible treatment of breast cancer, the performance of a novel carbon dioxide-based device was evaluated through both benchtop testing and an in vivo canine model. This novel device was quantitatively compared to [...] Read more.
To investigate the potential of an affordable cryotherapy device for the accessible treatment of breast cancer, the performance of a novel carbon dioxide-based device was evaluated through both benchtop testing and an in vivo canine model. This novel device was quantitatively compared to a commercial device that utilizes argon gas as the cryogen. The thermal behavior of each device was characterized through calorimetry and by measuring the temperature profiles of iceballs generated in tissue phantoms. A 45 min treatment in a tissue phantom from the carbon dioxide device produced a 1.67 ± 0.06 cm diameter lethal isotherm that was equivalent to a 7 min treatment from the commercial argon-based device, which produced a 1.53 ± 0.15 cm diameter lethal isotherm. An in vivo treatment was performed with the carbon dioxide-based device in one spontaneously occurring canine mammary mass with two standard 10 min freezes. Following cryotherapy, this mass was surgically resected and analyzed for necrosis margins via histopathology. The histopathology margin of necrosis from the in vivo treatment with the carbon dioxide device at 14 days post-cryoablation was 1.57 cm. While carbon dioxide gas has historically been considered an impractical cryogen due to its low working pressure and high boiling point, this study shows that carbon dioxide-based cryotherapy may be equivalent to conventional argon-based cryotherapy in size of the ablation zone in a standard treatment time. The feasibility of the carbon dioxide device demonstrated in this study is an important step towards bringing accessible breast cancer treatment to women in low-resource settings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel, Low Cost Technologies for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics)
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15 pages, 4393 KiB  
Article
In Vivo Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Ethyl Cellulose-Ethanol Tissue Ablation in a Swine Cervix Model
by Tri T. Quang, Jeffrey Yang, Michele L. Kaluzienski, Anna Parrish, Asma Farooqui, David Katz, Brian Crouch, Nimmi Ramanujam and Jenna L. Mueller
Bioengineering 2023, 10(11), 1246; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10111246 - 25 Oct 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1738
Abstract
Current therapies for treating cervical dysplasia are often inaccessible in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), highlighting the need for novel low-cost therapies that can be delivered at the point of care. Ethanol ablation is a low-cost therapy designed to treat locoregional cancers, which [...] Read more.
Current therapies for treating cervical dysplasia are often inaccessible in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), highlighting the need for novel low-cost therapies that can be delivered at the point of care. Ethanol ablation is a low-cost therapy designed to treat locoregional cancers, which we augmented into an ethyl cellulose (EC)-ethanol gel formulation to enhance its efficacy. Here, we evaluated whether EC-ethanol ablation is able to safely achieve an ablation zone comparable to thermocoagulation, a commonly used therapy for cervical dysplasia. The study was performed in 20 female Yorkshire pigs treated with either a single 500 µL injection of EC-ethanol into the 12 o’clock position of the cervix or a single application of thermocoagulation at 100 °C for 20 s. The average temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood oxygen remained within normal ranges throughout the EC-ethanol procedure and were similar to the thermocoagulation group. No major side effects were observed. The reproductive tracts were excised after 24 h to examine ablation zones. Comparable depths of necrosis were seen for EC-ethanol (18.6 ± 1.6 mm) and thermocoagulation (19.7 ± 4.1 mm). The volumes of necrosis induced by a single injection of EC-ethanol (626.2 ± 122.8 µL) were comparable to the necrotic volumes induced by thermocoagulation in the top half of the cervices (664.6 ± 168.5 µL). This suggests that two EC-ethanol injections could be performed (e.g., at the 12 and 6 o’clock positions) to achieve comparable total necrotic volumes to thermocoagulation and safely and effectively treat women with cervical dysplasia in LMICs. This is the first study to systematically evaluate EC-ethanol ablation in a large animal model and compare its safety and efficacy to thermocoagulation, a commonly used ablative therapy for cervical dysplasia. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel, Low Cost Technologies for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics)
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