Skin cancer detection can use banana skin

Scientists' latest research shows that black spots on mature banana peels can be used to quickly and easily diagnose human skin cancer, thereby increasing the survival rate of skin cancer patients. How is it achieved?

When the banana is ripe, the banana skin will be covered with black dots because of tyrosinase. It is reported that tyrosinase is also present in human skin. If the human tyrosinase index is too high, melanoma will occur, which is a potential form of skin cancer.

A team of scientists developed a cancer scanner based on the observation of the commonality between banana tyrosinase and human skin cancer. After that, they further refined and tested the banana peel and plan to ultimately effectively detect human skin tissue. First, researchers at the Swiss physical and electrochemical analysis laboratory concluded that tyrosinase is a reliable marker of melanoma formation.

In the first stage of skin cancer formation, tyrosinase is not very obvious; in the second stage, tyrosinase will become widely and evenly distributed; in the third stage, tyrosinase begins to be unevenly distributed, and cancer cells begin to spread to The rest of the body. This means that early detection of skin cancer will significantly increase the probability of patient survival.

The American Cancer Society stated that if tyrosinase was detected and treated promptly in the first stage of skin cancer, the probability of survival of the patient was 95%, but tyrosinase was detected in the middle stage of the third stage of skin cancer, and the survival probability of the patient will be Drop to 43%.

The team developed a scanner that was used to test banana peel spots that were similar in size to human skin melanoma spots. The research team leader Hubert Girault said: "By studying banana peels, we can develop a diagnostic method that will be further improved in the future and eventually used in human biopsy analysis."

The scanner has 8 elastic microelectrodes with a distribution similar to the comb and scans the skin to measure the distribution and quantity of tyrosinase. The team said that this scanner will avoid the use of invasive diagnostics such as biopsy.

Giroud believes that this kind of scanner can destroy the tumor in the future and is expected to achieve effective inspections and avoid unnecessary chemotherapy. Our initial laboratory tests showed that the device can be used to destroy these cancer cells. At present, this research report is published in the recently published "Journal of Applied Chemistry."