10/24/2010 BBC News : Tiny chip could diagnose di…

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Tiny chip could diagnose disease
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By Jason Palmer ADVERTISEMENT
Asia-Pacific Scienc e and tec hnology reporter, BBC News
Europe
Researchers have
Middle East
demonstrated a tiny chip based
South Asia
on silicon that could be used to
UK diagnose dozens of diseases.
Business
A tiny drop of blood is drawn
Health
through the chip, where disease
Science & markers are caught and show up
Environment
under light.
Technology
Entertainment
The device uses the tendency of
a fluid to travel through small
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channels under its own force,
Video and Audio instead of using pumps.
A tiny amount of blood is drawn
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The design is simpler, requires less through the chip into a single channel
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It has a flexible design so that it could be used for a wide range of RELATED INTERNET LINKS
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The device relies on an array of antibody molecules that are designed

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"There are devices that have been developed in mic rofluidics to do Kenya football crush kills seven
analysis of proteins, but most of them use active pumping and Cholera reaches Haiti's capital
electrical c omponents," said Luc Gervais, a co-author on the study. Ecuadorean wins siesta contest
"They're very complex systems; this makes them less easy to use by Week in pictures: 16-22 October 2010
non-trained personnel - and it makes them a lot more expensive to Mexico gunmen 'kill 13 at party'
manufacture," Dr Gervais told BBC News.

Instead, the new devic e exploits Most popular now, in detail

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10/24/2010 BBC News : Tiny chip could diagnose di…
capillary action, the tendency of
fluids to climb through narrow
channels - the same phenomenon
that drives water into a sponge
placed on a wet surface.

The speed with whic h blood is

drawn through the chip can be
controlled by the design of the
micro-c hannels on the device.
Those channels can be designed
with incredible precision on a
silicon chip - something with ...and the design of the "capillary
which IBM has significant pump" affects how fast blood moves
experience.

The microc hannel-patterned c hip is then sealed with a special

polymer c alled polydimethylsiloxane, to which the "detec tor"
antibodies easily bond.

Different antibodies can be placed in a number of distinc t channels,

making it possible to diagnose a range of different diseases
simultaneously.

Such wide-ranging studies can be done in large analysers, found in

the c entral laboratories of hospitals.

"Typic ally you'll take a couple of millilitres of blood, send it to the

central lab and it can take up to an hour or even more to get the
results," Dr Gervais said.

"In our case you c an get a quantitative analysis of the patient's

blood within just a few minutes at the bedside of the patient."

What is more, it can be done with just a few microlitres of blood - a

thousand times less - an amount that could be collec ted with a prick
of a finger instead of a syringe.

While the approach will make diagnosis cheaper, co-author Emmanuel

Delamarche said the key aspect of the approach is its speed.

"We are giving back precious minutes to doctors so they can make
informed and accurate decisions right at the time they need them
most to save lives."

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