The Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) are part of the international consortium NanoBright, which has developed this new tool.

The probe reaches deep into the brain without causing appreciable damage, making it minimally invasive. It projects an ultra-thin beam of light.

The light from the probe illuminates nerve tissue and provides information about its chemical composition. This makes it possible to detect molecular changes caused by tumours or other lesions.

This "molecular flashlight" is currently a research tool, but researchers hope it will be used on patients in the future. The study is published in Nature Methods.

Pioneering research has unveiled a powerful new tool in the fight against skin cancer, combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence with deep learning to enhance the precision of skin lesion classification. This innovative approach, which utilizes a weighted ensemble of transfer learning models and test time augmentation (TTA), promises to significantly improve the accuracy of skin cancer diagnosis. By distinguishing between benign and malignant lesions with remarkable precision, this research could pave the way for earlier, more effective treatments and potentially save countless lives.

MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researcher Aguirre de Cubas, Ph.D., is a recipient of the Department of Defense Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators Early Career Scholar Award. With funding from the award, De Cubas will study whether the release of mitochondrial DNA helps the immune system to see and kill kidney tumors better, with a view to developing a therapeutic that could be paired with immune checkpoint inhibitors, now a mainstay of treatment, to improve outcomes.