The new technology, created by a team of experts, can determine the type and severity of cancer someone has by assessing molecular samples on a fingertip-sized chip, which is then fed into a device about the size of a personal organizer.
“We think this is very significant,” said Shana Kelley, the lead investigator for the research and co-author of a report released Sunday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
“At the moment, we don’t look for as many molecular markers as we actually could when doing clinical diagnosis of things like cancer because it’s too expensive to do the analysis There are some screening tests that are available, but there could be many more if the right kind of device is available.”
She said being able to determine the severity and type of cancer is critical is developing treatment programs for patients.
The new technology can get patients on track for the necessary procedures quicker, Kelley added.
“Prostate cancer, in particular, can be very aggressive or very slow growing and it’s quite important to be able to distinguish those types,” said Kelley, a professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Toronto.
“With this chip, we’re able to take samples from prostate cancer patients and see which markers they have and then correlate the outputs with the severity of the disease.”
Results from the chip, which used a test field of about 10 samples for Sunday’s report, can be seen within an hour, Kelley said. More conventional means of diagnosis, such as a biopsy, can take days to determine results.
The technology has so far been used only to test existing biopsy samples, but Kelley said she hopes it will eventually allow for cancer testing that is easier on patients.
“To do non-invasive testing, you need a very sensitive device that will pick up on the very low levels of cancer cells you see circulating in urine and blood and sites outside the tumour, where you can find some of the same molecules,” she said.
“We attained sensitivities we think will allow us to use our devices for non-invasive testing,” she said. “We have not yet done the work with clinical samples, but that’s the next step and the sensitivities we have make that possible in principle.”
While its main focus to date is cancer diagnosis, Kelley said the microchip can also be used to diagnose and assess infectious diseases, such as HIV and H1N1.
“You can detect different types of bacteria and viruses if you know which molecules to look for,” said Kelley.
“Any type of cancer where there’s an established molecular profile, we can modify our platform so we can gear it towards whatever disease is of interest.”
The current project, led by Kelley and engineering professor Ted Sargent, has been ongoing for about three years, said Kelley, who has personally invested about 10 years into the research.
“It’s very exciting to be able to make a device like this and have it perform as well as it does with patient samples,” she said. “It gives us confidence we’ll be able to take it to the next level and get it into the clinics.”
Kelley said a five-year time frame would be a “conservative estimate” to get the device on the market.
This is amazing. Five years seems like such a long time to get it on the market, I hope that the researchers will work diligently to get it to market faster. This could save lives....
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