When treating cancer with surgery, there's nothing as important as making sure that every last bit of the disease has been removed. That's not always possible, since tumors have nasty habits of embedding themselves within healthy tissue and of breaking away and spreading malignancies to other parts of the body. But Researchers at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have come up with an innovative way of giving surgeons the upper hand against these wily tumors. They have created a molecular "paint" that coats cancer cells so doctors can see the wayward cells that they may otherwise miss.
The paint is...