Text G. New Test Spots Cancer Cells in Blood

US scientists have developed a sensitive method that can spot cancer cells at a much earlier stage. The method, which can detect a single cancer cell among 100 million cells, may also help physicians choose among cancer therapies and monitor treatment results. Earlier methods employing microscopic staining methods and amplification of genetic materials using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) could spot one cancer cell among one million cells. A team led by Jonathan W. Uhr of the University of Texas, used microscopic iron particles attached to antibodies. The antibodies bind to surface proteins present on epithelial cells – from which most cancers originate – but not on blood cells. The scientists used a magnet to separate epithelial cells from other cells in the blood. Mr. Uhr and his colleagues then added to the remaining cells an antibody that binds to another surface protein on epithelial cells. The antibody is fused to a molecule that fluoresces, letting the investigators use a laser to isolate the marked cells.

The laser also helps them examine properties of cells such as size. This formation and data from additional tests suggest that the detected epithelial cells indeed come from tumours. When tested on 30 people with breast cancer, three with prostate cancer, and 13 with no cancer, this techniquerevealed that people with cancer had significantly more epithelial cells – presumably shed by tumours – in their blood. Moreover, those with the most widespread cancer had the highest number of epithelial cells, they Sported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The dumber of tumour cells in the blood correlated quite well with the clinical status of the patients," says Mr. Uhr. The investigators also followed eight "feast cancer patients for up to ten months, relating changes in epithelial cell numbers directly to responses to therapies. Epithelial cells disappeared from one patient’s blood when she responded to chemotherapy but rose when she stopped treatment and suffered a relapse. When another roundof chemotherapy put the disease into remission, the epithelial cells again vanished, which is a sign that the test is working.

But researchers caution that many more patients need to be examined before physicians can reliably use any information about the number of epithelial cells in blood. Mr. Uhr also plans to examine whether noncancerous diseases also cause epithelial cells to be shed into blood. It’s also vital to determine how many of these cells can show up in the blood of a healthy person, so that physicians won’t mistakenly diagnose disease.

Text H. Silicon Valley

It was not called "Silicon Valley" when I was growing up there in the 1940s and 1950s. It was simply the Santa Clara Valley, a previously agricultural area of apricot and cherry orchards rapidly filling with suburban housing. Industrial "parks" also appeared as the postwar boom in electronics took hold in California. Blessed with a temperate climate, the valley stretches beside San Francisco Bay from the college town of Palo Alto to what was once the sleepy city of San Jose.

Today this is the nation’s ninth largest manufacturing center, with me fastest-growing and wealthiest economy in the United States. In the last Ю years, San Jose has grown by over a third, jumping from 29th to j7th largest city in the United States. In the same period, the median family income in the valley went from $18,000 a year to an estimated $27,000. There are 6000 Ph.D.s living here – one of every six doctorates in California – and they are a hard-working lot. Many engineers put in 15-hour days and seven-day work weeks, and talk about achieving success in 10 years. The rewards they seek are apt to be the more material badges of success, such as cars and real estate. Porsches and Mercedes abound, and one local Ferrari dealership is second in size only to the one in Beverly Hills. A Monopoly-like board game developed locally is almost a satire on this success/failure frenzy. Called "Silicon Valley: In the Chips", it has very little to do with silicon chips and computers. Rather, the object of the game is "to negotiate your way through the valley and make your wealth through proper management of your income in home purchases and business investments".

As one who has watched not a few cow pastures become parking lots, I regard all this change with a great deal of ambivalence. How did such a concentration of high-tech industry come about?

One name often mentioned as being pivotal is Frederick Terman. In the 1940s, Stanford University, located near Palo Alto, was a respectable regional university, but not yet the world-class institution of higher learning it is today. For development on its scientific and technical side, a great deal of credit must go to Terman, who in 1946 became dean of the School of Engineering. On one hand, Terman urged former students with last names like Hewlett and Packard and Varian to establish their electronics businesses locally. On the other hand, he wholeheartedly encouraged Stanford to join the effort of establishing the region as a center °f advanced technology. He encouraged engineering faculty to go out attd consult. He offered training to industry engineers. He sat on the boards of small businesses. He helped persuade the university administration and trustees to lease Stanford land to local electronics compares, thus beginning the Stanford Industrial Park, the nucleus of commercial high technology in the region.

Today the 660-acre park has some 70 advanced-technology businesses located there. Hewlett-Packard Co., Varian Associates, and other early tenants were followed into the valley in the 1950s by such large firms as Lockheed, General Electric, Ford, and GTE. The U.S. government established research facilities at Moffett Naval Air Station and nearby Berkeley and Livermore.

It has been said there would be no "Silicon Valley", however, if William Shockley’s mother had not lived in Palo Alto. One of the inventors of the transistor (for which he won a Nobel Prize) while he was at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, Shockley returned to the town where he was raised and in 1956 set up Shockley Transistor Co. Two years later several of his associates left and set up Fairchild Semiconductors Co., which many observers believe represents the true beginning of the semi-conductor industry. The 1960s became a turbulent time as many others left Fairchild to start companies with now well-known names such as National Semiconductor, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices. Among computer manufacturers, IBM was the first to arrive in the valley, but one of its executives, Gene Amdahl, resigned in 1970 and started his own company. Tandem Computers, Inc., was founded in 1974 by several former Hewlett-Packard employees. Peripheral equipment manufacturers – makers of storage devices and media and related equipment – also sprang up. Ampex, started in 1944 and a pioneer in magnetic recording systems, was followed by companies such as Memorex, started in 1961. Electronic games began when Atari, Inc., created "Pong" in 1972. The company now makes personal computers, but it was not prepared to enter into that market when one of its employees, a young college dropout named Steve Jobs, first urged it to do so. Jobs joined forces with Steve Wozniak of Hewlett-Packard and founded Apple Computer, one of the valley’s huge success stories.

Today, the Santa Clara Valley seems to an old-time resident to be strangling on its own success. Housing is among the most expensive in the country: former $25,000 homes sell for $300,000 and up. The pace and intensity of work leads to job burnout, and the divorce rate is higher than the rate for the state as a whole. Traffic chokes the eight-lane freeways. Local zoning boards and city councils are resisting further growth.

However, Silicon Valley is no longer a single region. It is a way of life-"Silicon Valley" has moved beyond Santa Clara County to the so-called 128 Belt of Boston; to the "Sci/Com" area along Route 270 outside of Washington, D.C.; to Colorado; to Oregon – and to many places overseas.