Can you remember those monotonous blood-tests for studying the proteins, waiting for a few hours for the results and then dredging to collect your report? We are sure cancer and heart patients understand exactly what we are mentioning here. Imagine the plight of the technicians who were required to analyze sample after sample. Well, there is good news,“A ten-minute blood test, to study the proteins”.
Blood is a reliable basis for diagnostics, clinically. Proteins in the blood are normally measured to determine the cancer-risk, to monitor the health of those people suffering from chronic disease and the health of the aged. Usually, it is a cumbersome and a painful process as it requires blood to be taken and analyzed on a regular basis, not to mention that it is expensive too.
Microfluidicsis a new branch of biotechnology, with an aim to master the fluids at a micro scale. It can automate experiments in the field ofgenomicsand pharmaceuticals. It can enable instant diagnostic tests with a vision to build implantable drug-delivery devices on chips. Researchers aimed to build devices from sample mixing toDNAsequencing. Integration of microfluidicsandDNA-encoded antibody will enable reliable processing of blood.
Caltech Chemistry Professor,James HeathandLeroy Hood, the President and Founder of the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle together have developed a microfluidicchip for diagnosis. This is a process based on the simple laws of microfluidics. Their company called“Integrated Diagnostics”has been founded with a vision to commercialize the blood chip.
This chip can identify35proteins in a drop of blood within ten minutes. This used to take more time and blood for the technicians. A drop of blood is collected on a micro scale channel by applying pressure .The first channel narrows down to smaller channels separating the blood cells from the protein-rich serum. This procedure was usually done by the centrifugal method, which was time consuming. These channels are coated with protein-capturing bar codes which are nothing but lines ofDNAbound to antibodies. Antibodies highlight the proteins when the cells and the serum are flushed out, under the focus of a fluorescent microscope or a gene-chip scanner. This is identified by the location of the red lines in the bar code.
This allows rapid measurement of a panel of plasma proteins, in a time scale that is prior to degradation of the blood. It represents a cheaper, quicker, reliable, and accurate procedure in a clinical diagnostic platform.
This method of testing is more accurate, quicker; does not allow the blood to degrade, enables earlier detection of diseases and costs a nickel a protein. In the U.S., it normally costs$ 500to test one blood protein,10-15milliliters of blood and multiple visits to the doctor. Researchers aim to reduce the cost of such tests by an order of magnitude using this microfluidicchip.
