There are four pages in the March 2007 Reader's Digest featuring amazing discoveries, devices, tests, and cures. And many of the snippets of information are -- yes -- somehow linked to cancer.

Think about this:

• A new ultrasound technique lets radiologists distinguish between malignant and benign breast lesions. Using elasticity imaging, researchers accurately identified harmless and cancerous lesions in almost all of the 80 cases studied. If results can be reproduced in a large trial, this technique could significantly reduce the number of breast biopsies required.

• Scientists seeking new treatment for diseases can use an online tool developed by researchers at MIT and Harvard. The Connectivity Map matches diseases with compatible drugs, based on the genetic profiles of both. So far, about 160 drugs and compounds are cataloged, and a few new uses for existing drugs have already been suggested. Eventually, all FDA-approved drugs will be included.

• For those who sometimes forget to take their pills, a new device -- that can be preloaded with up to 100 doses of medication -- could one day be implanted in the body and programmed to administer drugs via wireless signals. This device, successful in tests using dogs, was designed to deliver medicines that are less effective when taken orally.

Sometimes it seems cancer's grip is tightening. Other times, in the war against this pesky disease, it seems we are on the verge of something really great.

Researchers have found a way to make cancer cells vibrate, and by using laser techniques from optics and ultrasound techniques from acoustics, listen for the sound of cancer cells. By taking blood samples from actual cancer patients, and listening for the sound, they were able to detect the presence of cancer when as few as ten cancer cells were present in a blood sample.

The loud cracking sound that the cancer cells emit is caused by a process in which cancer cells absorb energy bursts from a blue-laser light, causing them to go through rapid cycles of expanding as they heat up and shrinking as they cool down. This new technique of identifying cancer cells through a simple blood sample will allow oncologists to detect very early signs of cancer spreading as the cancer cells are traveling before they settle into an organ in the body.

According to the University of Missouri-Columbia researchers, current techniques to monitor cancer spread and recurrence have proven to be inaccurate, time-consuming and painful. This new blood-test procedure would eliminate some of those less-accurate procedures and could be done on a regular basis with immediate results. "It could take just 30 minutes to find out if there are any circulating cancer cells," stated John Viator, a biomedical engineer at Missouri-Columbia and a coauthor of the Optics Letters study.

Research presented at the meeting on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development, organized by the American Association for Cancer Research, says that in the near future the United States will have a new way to detect distant metastasis sooner in breast cancer patients.

The company AdnaGen's diagnostic tool is being evaluated in clinical studies at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The tool can spot one malignant cell in a typical blood sample.

Using the new technology cancer cells can be captured and analyzed to identify several gene products, including potential molecular targets for a specific drug. Treatments for metastatic breast cancer usually will be given based on the features of the primary tumor. The cancer's primary tumor can be estrogen negative but the metastasis can be estrogen positive. Knowing this information can open up more treatment options for those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.

AdnaGen, which is marketing its breast cancer assay (as well as assays for colon and prostate cancer) in Europe, is awaiting the results of a clinical trial before applying for FDA approval to make the test available in the United States.

Metastatic brain tumors -- tumors that spread from a cancer in another area of the body -- are among the worst tumors and will plague about 200,000 people in the United States every year. But once considered a death sentence, these brain tumors -- primarily those one centimeter in size or less -- can now be treated with a breakthrough radiation technique launched at the University of Florida College of Medicine. This new state-of-the-art radiosurgery device for noninvasive, outpatient treatment is more precise and more powerful than previous methods of treatment. Approved by the FDA in June, this Trilogy Tx system makes traditional surgery unnecessary for many patients. Dr. William Friedman, chairman for the department of neurosurgery at UF and one of two professors who developed and patented seven components of this system over the past 20 years, says, "I'm a surgeon, but if you can provide an outpatient, noninvasive treatment that requires no anesthesia, has extremely high cure rates, and very low complication rates, the question is: Why do surgery?"

Patients of this treatment are fitted with a head ring that prevents the their heads from moving while the Trilogy machine rotates to deliver radiation beams from many angles. While traditional radiation is given every day, Monday through Friday, for six weeks, the Trilogy Tx requires one single treatment that lasts for 15 minutes. It's comparable in cost to standard radition, is cheaper than surgery, and is typically covered by insurance. And it works -- which is the best selling feature, I think.