A technology using tiny exploding bubbles inside tumours could one day help to mop up cancer cells during surgery.

Surgeons lack the tools to detect microtumours during cancer surgery, increasing the risk that cancer will come back. To address this, Dmitri Lapotko, now at the medical-technology firm Masimo in Irvine, California, and his colleagues injected gold nanoparticles into tumour-bearing mice before surgery. The particles, which have cancer-specific antibodies on their surfaces, were taken up by cancer cells. After removing the main tumour, the researchers heated up the nanoparticles using a short laser pulse, causing nanobubbles to form and explode only in the cancer cells, destroying them without harming normal tissue. The explosions generated a detectable acoustic signal.

The team spotted small numbers of these cells during surgery that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. After the surgery, no tumours regrew in any animals in which residual cancer was removed, whereas more than 80% of the mice that had standard surgery died of recurring tumours.

Nature Nanotech. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.343 (2016)