PillCam®COLON capsule endoscopy (CE), a non-invasive diagnostic tool of the digestive tract, has dramatically changed diagnostic approaches and has become an attractive alternative to the conventional colonoscopy for early detection of colorectal cancer. However, despite the significant progress and non-invasive detection capability, studies have shown that this technique's sensitivity and specificity is lower than that of conventional colonoscopy. BINA scientists have created a new optical detection method, specifically tailored to colon cancer detection and based on the well-known optical properties of immune-conjugated gold nanorods (GNRs). They have shown, on a colon cancer model implanted in a chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM), that this detection method enables conclusive differentiation between cancerous and normal tissue, where neither the distance between the light source and the intestinal wall, nor the background signal, affects the monitored signal. This optical method, which can easily be integrated in CE, is expected to reduce false positive and false negative results and improve identification of tumors and micro metastases.

The Diffusion Reflection (DR) method is a simple, non-invasive imaging technique which has been proven useful for the investigation of tissues’ optical parameters. Intraoperative detection of residual disease in oral cancer may reduce the high rate of recurrences. The aim of this study was to check the sensitivity of the DR measurement of Gold Nanoparticles (GNP) in a rat model of oral squamous cell carcinoma. The results of the present study clearly demonstrate the power of the direct DR scanning in identifying carcinomatous changes in tissue sections. The direct DR scanning can be used as a simple tool for detecting residual disease intraoperatively.