A research team in Taiwan has
developed a chip with nanoparticles that can detect proteins related to cancer
in around half an hour.
The research, led by Jen Chunping
from Taiwan’s Chung Cheng University, was published recently in the
international journal Biomicrofluidics.
Chunping said that people with
cancer have some specific proteins in their bodies, which are called tumor
markers.
However, the proteins cannot
usually be detected until they are in a large concentration during the middle
and later stages of cancer.
The new technology can detect
tumor markers in the bloodstream of cancer patients when they are still in the
early stages of the disease.
Furthermore, cancer screening in
general hospitals usually takes at least one day to test different bodily
substances, while the chip requires just five microliters of blood or urine.
Chunping said that the chip,
which took five years to develop, will be fitted into a handheld medical device
than can also be used in the detection of other diseases.
Developers are working with a
Russian research team on a three-year plan to use similar technology to detect
Alzheimer’s disease.
The chip works at a low voltage
of about 36 volts, so that it can use general-purpose batteries or household
electricity to analyse the sample.
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