Detecting cancer with the prick of a finger

Detecting cancer with the prick of a finger
Detecting cancer with the prick of a finger
(Nanowerk News) Researchers at BYU have created a micro device that could both decrease the amount of blood and time needed to test for cancer-markers in a patient's blood.
Chemistry professor Adam Woolley's research, published in a recent issue of the journal, Lab on a Chip, details the device and technique that would allow for effective detection of biomarkers in a blood sample in a matter of minutes rather than days or weeks.
"You could walk into the doctor's office, the nurse could prick your finger instead of sticking a needle in your vein, and 30 or 40 minutes later, you'd get the results back in the same doctor's office," Woolley said.
Woolley said the current approach for detecting biomarkers, ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), works well as long as you're doing it in high volumes. This is why blood samples are usually sent to a clinical lab where they can run dozens of samples at the same time.
And while ELISA is efficient and cost effective if, say, there are 90 blood samples to process, the BYU micro device would allow a technician to look at just one sample quickly and cost-effectively to determine if there are markers for, say, breast cancer or prostate cancer.