Lumicell Sheds Light on Residual Cancer

When cancer is surgically removed, it is extremely difficult for the surgeon to be certain that the cancer was removed in its entirety within the window of the procedure. Surgeons may visually inspect or palpate the cavity before sending a sample of the removed mass to a pathology lab to have the margin of presumed healthy tissue examined ex-vivo. If the margin is free of outlying cancer, no immediate surgical follow-up is required. If the pathologist does find cancer in the original margin, in most cases, a second surgery is scheduled to remove the rest, incurring further physical and financial costs for the patient. Per the current standard of care, a pathologist typically examines less than 1% of the surface area of a removed tumor, leading to potential uncertainties in margin status evaluation.

Howard Hechler, CEO of Lumicell, recognizes the constraints of current techniques and presents the start-up’s solution LumiSystem, a combination of the imaging agent LUMISIGHT and Lumicell Direct Visualization System (DVS), as a way to detect cancer that otherwise would go undetected. “[The methods in use today] have fundamental limitations based on the tissue deforming, the tissue planes moving relative to the cavity, and the time and effort it takes to look at the entire lump, et cetera,” Hechler says. “With LumiSystem, we look for cancer where and when it matters most, inside the breast cavity during surgery.”