Lab-on-a-chip for heart attack detection
DB: I’m Deborah Byrd.
JB: And I’m Joel Block. Tiny devices that use only a drop of blood are capable of quickly detecting a possible heart attack.
DB: That’s according to Tony Garcia, a professor of bioengineering at Arizona State University in Tempe. He’s helping to develop this lab–on–a–chip, which is small enough to carry in your hand.
JB: Garcia and his colleagues found a way to precisely control the movement of millimeter–sized water drops. The drops dance on an extremely slick surface of tiny nanowires. It’s a first step toward someday manipulating bodily fluids, such as blood, on the surface of a computer chip in order to analyze what’s in it.
DB: Garcia told Earth & Sky that one way to test whether a person has had a heart attack is to look for special proteins in the blood – for example, myoglobin, which accumulates as heart cells die.
Tony Garcia: The problem is that it takes about five hours after a heart attack for the myoglobin levels to be readily detected. So they get misdiagnosed. We’re interested in having a system that will actually track myoglobin over a period of time, quickly, so that we can tell whether it’s going up, which may be more important to know.
JB: Garcia expects this technology to be ready for hospital use in about five years. With thanks to the National Science Foundation, we’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
