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Health

Bioengineered freckle turns darker when it detects cancer

By Clare Wilson

18 April 2018

A blood test

An implant of skin cells could detect rising calcium levels

jarun011/Getty

A fake beauty spot could one day warn you of cancer. The implant, made of genetically engineered cells, has been designed to detect developing breast, prostate and colon cancers when they are only a few millimetres in size.

of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and his colleagues made this implant by genetically altering human skin cells so that they would become darker in colour when exposed to rising calcium levels. A rise in calcium in the blood is

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