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Sugar May Be Use to Detect Cancer Cells

Researchers from King’s College London and University College London (UCL) recently unveiled a potentially safer and less expensive way to detect cancer cells in humans.  It all has to do with the cancer cells’ sweet tooth. The new method, called glucose chemical exchange saturation transfer, or glucoCEST, uses specially tuned magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to detect the higher levels of glucose, a common sugar, as tumor cells use it for energy. In the MRI scanner, tumor cells light up when a patient is injected with glucose. In other words, the test uses radio waves from conventional MRIs to determine how quickly sugar is consumed by tumor cells, which need more glucose than healthy cells to survive. Researchers say the glucoCEST technique could