• Posted February 26, 2025

Rapid Gene Test Aids Brain Cancer Surgery

A rapid experimental genetic test can help guide the hands of surgeons as they delicately remove tumors from patients with brain cancer, new research suggests.

The test can measure the level of cancer cells in a tissue sample within 15 minutes, quick enough to give surgeons feedback while the patient’s still in the operating room.

The gene test can detect as few as five cancer cells per square millimeter of tissue, researchers said.

This makes it fast and accurate enough to become the first practical tool of its kind for detecting cancer cells in real time during brain surgery, researchers concluded.

“For many cancers, such as tumors in the brain, the success of cancer surgery and preventing the cancer’s return is predicated on removing as much of the tumor and surrounding cancer cells as is safely possible,” co-senior investigator Dr. Daniel Orringer, an associate professor of neurosurgery and pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City, said in a news release.

The test is called the Ultra-Rapid droplet digital PCR. A standard droplet digital PCR test already exists, but it typically takes several hours to produce a result, researchers said.

“With Ultra-Rapid droplet digital PCR, surgeons may now be able to determine what cells are cancerous and how many of these cancer cells are present in any particular tissue region at a level of accuracy that has never before been possible,” Orringer said.

The Ultra-Rapid test produced the same results as standard droplet digital PCR testing in more than 75 tissue samples taken from 22 patients at NYU Langone, according to results published Feb. 25 in the journal Cell.

The patients all were receiving surgery to remove glioma tumors, a type of brain cancer.

The test also accurately assessed samples with known cancer and samples without any cancer, the researchers reported.

“Our study shows that Ultra-Rapid droplet digital PCR could be a fast and efficient tool for making a molecular diagnosis during surgery for brain cancer, and it has potential to also be used for cancers outside the brain,” co-senior investigator Dr. Gilad Evrony said in a news release. He's a geneticist at the Center for Human Genetics and Genomics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Researchers developed the Ultra-Rapid test by looking for efficiencies in each of the steps involved in the standard test.

For example, they shortened the time needed to extract DNA from tumor samples from 30 minutes to less than five minutes. 

They also reduced the time needed to treat the samples from two hours to less than three minutes.

The next step will be to automate the Ultra-Rapid test to make it faster and simpler to use in the operating room, researchers said. They also plan to adapt it for other types of cancer.

However, they cautioned that the test will not become widely available until it’s been further refined and subjected to clinical trial.

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more about brain cancer.

SOURCE: NYU Langone Health/NYU Grossman School of Medicine, news release, Feb. 25, 2025.