Chemotherapy and other treatments that take down cancer cells can also destroy patients’ immune cells. Every year, that leads tens of thousands of cancer patients with weakened immune systems to contract infections that can turn deadly if unmanaged.
Doctors must strike a balance between giving enough chemotherapy to eradicate cancer while not giving so much that the patient’s white blood cell count gets dangerously low, a condition known as neutropenia. It can also leave patients socially isolated in between rounds of chemotherapy. Currently, the only way for doctors to monitor their patients’ white blood cells is through blood tests.
Now Leuko is developing an at-home white blood cell monitor to give doctors a more complete view of their patients’ health remotely. Rather than drawing blood, the device uses light to look through the skin at the top of the fingernail, and artificial intelligence to analyze and detect when white blood cells reach dangerously low levels.
The technology was first conceived of by researchers at MIT in 2015. Over the next few years, they developed a prototype and conducted a small study to validate their approach. Today, Leuko’s devices have accurately detected low white blood cell counts in hundreds of cancer patients, all without drawing a single drop of blood.
“We expect this to bring a clear improvement in the way that patients are monitored and cared for in the outpatient setting,” says Leuko co-founder and CTO Ian Butterworth, a former research engineer in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. “I also think there’s a more personal side of this for patients. These people can feel vulnerable around other people, and they don‘t currently have much they can do. That means that if they want to see their grandkids or see family, they’re constantly wondering, ‘Am I at high risk?’”
The company has been working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the last four years to design studies confirming their device is accurate and easy to use by untrained patients. Later this year, they expect to begin a pivotal study that will be used to register for FDA approval.
Once the device becomes an established tool for patient monitoring, Leuko’s team believes it could also give doctors a new way to optimize cancer treatment.
“Some of the physicians that we have talked to are very excited because they think future versions of our product could be used to personalize the dose of chemotherapy given to each patient,” says Leuko co-founder and CEO Carlos Castro-Gonzalez, a former postdoc at MIT. “If a patient is not becoming neutropenic, that could be a sign that you could increase the dose. Then every treatment could be based on how each patient is individually reacting.”