Blood-analyzing chip @ Wearestjohns.com

Blood-analyzing chip

Written on December 28, 2008 – 2:44 am | by admin | | Tags: analyzing, blood, cancer, chip

From only one drop, this new blood-analyzing chip could spot cancer in 10 minutes.

Getting blood work done can be a long when you’re sick, and this is an expensive process. The current method involves a nurse or doctor drawing 10 to 15 milliliters of blood into several vials, multiple technicians for many hours analyzing that blood, and an end cost per test of about $500. So, how does this sound?

Here the good news, just with one drop of blood, a new chip can do the same work in 10 minutes, and it only costs “a nickel a protein,” according to one of its developers. The microfluidic chip is being developed by James Heath, a chemistry professor at Caltech, and Institute for Systems Biology founder Leroy Hood. The chip performs the entire test, separating proteins and cells, and tagging the proteins so that if anything is found they’ll light up under a microscope.

They say that the technology will make it possible for doctors, rather than having to wait a week, to give a bedside diagnosis of cancer and other disease based on blood analysis. It analyzes blood when it’s fresh, even better making it far more accurate, rather than letting the quality of the sample degrade.