Artificial skin mole could provide early cancer alert

COMMON cancers could be detected by the appearance of an artificial mole on a patient’s skin.

The mole is created when genetically engineered cells – injected into the skin – release a pigment. They do this when they detect high calcium levels in the blood – an early sign of cancer.

The mole could act as a warning and save thousands of lives. It has been tested successfully in pigs and mice, and Swiss scientists hope it will be tried out on humans in five years.

Picking up cancer early is vital. Professor Martin Fussenegger, who led a study at ETH Zurich university, said: ‘Nowadays, people go to the doctor only when the tumour begins to cause problems. By that point it is often too late.’

More than half of new cancer cases are prostate, breast, lung and bowel cancers, which all cause calcium to leak into the blood from a patient’s bones.

The scientists, whose study on mice was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, genetically engineered human cells to pick up persistently high calcium and injected them into the skin within tiny beads made from an algae gel. High calcium levels trigger pigment production by the cells.