Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Charleston, MA

Daniel Haber, M.D., Ph.D
Director, Cancer Center
Massachusetts General Hospital

T.J. Martell Foundation Funded Research at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center

The group at Massachusetts General Hospital developed a novel "microfluidic chip" capable of capturing the extraordinarily rare cancer cells that circulate in the blood of patients with cancer. The chip is a silicon chamber microfabricated to contain 80,000 microscopic pillars, coated with a "glue" that attaches to the rare cancer cells, while allowing normal blood cells to flow through. The cancer cells, estimated at one cell per billion blood cells are shed from the primary tumor and are thought to be responsible for the spread of cancer to lungs, brain, liver and other organs. The new chip constitutes a "breakthrough technology" allowing for the  reliable and quantitative measurement of cancer cells as they transit in the blood, with potential important applications in early detection of cancer, monitoring of biomarkers and drug response in more advanced cancers, and eventually isolation and direct study of metastasis precursors, which are responsible for the death and morbidity of most cancers. The research was led by Dr. Mehmet Toner, director of the bioengineering laboratory at MGH, and by Dr. Daniel Haber, director of the MGH  Cancer Center. The creation of the bioengineering device was published by the MGH team in the prestigious Journal Nature in December 2007. Its first clinical application in the treatment of "non-smokers' lung cancer, using genetically-targeted therapies, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2008.