Quyen Nguyen: Color-coded surgery TED Video

[rhody]

Color-coded surgery TED Video

Surgeons are taught from textbooks which conveniently color-code the types of tissues, but that's not what it looks like in real life -- until now. At TEDMED Quyen Nguyen demonstrates how a molecular marker can make tumors light up in neon green, showing surgeons exactly where to cut.

Tumor and Nerve staining is very cool, hats off to Dr. Roger Tsien (who shared Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry 2008) for creating the breakthrough green fluorescent protein which is the basis for the Tumor and Nerve staining technology. If this technology had been available when my wife had breast cancer five years ago, I suspect many lymph nodes would have been spared.

Rhody...

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I can't watch the video right now but fluorescent staining for tumours is an incredibly exciting field. You may be interested to read about sentinel lymph node imagine via fluorescent quantum dots (far more potential than conventional fluorescent markers).

Also, if by Green Fluorescent Protein you mean GFP this is also a remarkable tool but was adapted from a jellyfish rather than invented from scratch.

 

[rhody]

Also, if by Green Fluorescent Protein you mean GFP this is also a remarkable tool but was adapted from a jellyfish rather than invented from scratch.

From the Tsien link, is this what you were referring to ?

In 2009, a new kind of IFP was developed by Tsien's group, and further reported and described by Science. The new IFPs are developed from bacterial phytochromes instead of from multicellular organism like jellyfish. Under normal conditions, bacterial phytochromes absorb light for signaling instead of fluorescence, but they can be turned fluorescent after deleting some of the signaling parts by genetic means such as site-directed mutagenesis. In order to fluorescence, tetrapyrrole is also required, however, it's abundant in living bodies.[

Rhody...