In Translation

Breathing easier
(continued)

“We want to be able to measure very small amounts of chemotherapeutic agents to increase effectiveness and minimize side effects,” said Gandara, also a professor of hematology/oncology at UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center.

“All of us are different in our genetic makeup, in how our bodies respond to drugs,” Turteltaub explained. “Yet right now, chemotherapy regimens are based on an average individual. We’d like to be able to go into each one of us to determine what is exactly the right amount of a drug for us.”

Animal experiments must come first, to prove that the AMS can safely trace and measure chemotherapy agents in living organisms.
The AMS also must be made smaller and cheaper if it is to join the microscope or the x-ray as an indispensable medical tool.
Already, Livermore scientists have designed and built a more compact version at a cost of about $1 million. (Livermore’s original machine cost $7 million). Turteltaub and Dingley now use the smaller machine for most of their human testing. While the compact AMS is still big, it could be housed in a typical hospital.

Turteltaub is optimistic the new machine will indeed find a place in medicine, beginning with cancer care. By using AMS data to tailor chemotherapy to each patient and each cancer, he believes more cancer patients will survive their disease.

“If we can do this, it will be a major accomplishment,” Turteltaub said. “The last 10 to 15 years we have spent developing this will have been worthwhile.

“All of us will feel very good about it.”

sidebar text

Radiation exposure from a typical AMS study is less than a passenger absorbs from the atmosphere during a flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles, and far less than the radiation from a routine chest x-ray.