Scientists from the Pennsylvania State University have found that a high amount of fluorescent molecules that naturally reside in human’s body can be used as biomarkers for cancer.

NADH (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is an enzyme found in mitochondria. “Dysfunctional enzymes in the mitochondria are known to be associated with serious health problems such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases,” said Ahmed Heikal, one of the researchers. “By detecting the level of NADH and its distribution inside living cells, we should be able to monitor the mitochondrial activity and thus the integrity of any given cell, without adding potentially toxic dyes or actually destroying the cell.”

The main catch that scientists are working on is to be able to differentiate normal healthy cells from the “bad” cancer ones. Now, by using special techniques, they were able to make that happen.
“If we are given two live cells, one normal and the other cancerous, we could differentiate between the two with confidence,” said Heikal.

“Our method is not limited to detecting cancer. Other neurodegenerative diseases related to mitochondrial anomalies can also be detected with our method,” said Heikal. “We can also use our approach to quantify the efficiency of a new drug on manipulating the activities of mitochondrial enzymes associated with energy production in cells.”

Adopted from materials provided by psu.edu