New blood test leads to early disease diagnosis
Model of DNA molecule (Credit: Mike Knowles)
A University of Virginia chemistry professor has created a device that he says can very quickly diagnose certain diseases at the earliest stages of onset.
University of Virginia’s James Landers told Earth & Sky that this device – which resembles a glass microscope slide – uses nanotechnology. It works by analyzing the patient’s blood. Tiny, nanoscale pores embedded in the device allow it to examine DNA molecules in the blood for signs of disease.
James Landers: The whole purpose of the clinical diagnostic procedure is to essentially evaluate certain parts of DNA and see whether or not DNA sequences are normal or whether there are abnormal or mutated sequences in there.
Landers said abnormalities in particular sections of a DNA strand can be signs of early-stage cancer or other problems. While standard genetic analyses for cancer can take days and even weeks, this device can do the same work in a matter of hours, according to Landers.
James Landers: When comparing that to 3 days or 2 weeks, it’s a paradigm shift, and I think the MDs that we work with tell us that this changes how they do their job, which is what research is about.
And doctors know that the earlier they can detect cancer and other diseases, the better chance they have of treating and possibly curing them.
Thanks today to the National Science Foundation.
Our thanks to:
James Landers
University of Virginia
James Landers also said, “On the nano scale, a number of things are important in these devices. One of them is, if you’ve got a very complex microplumbing system, you don’t want all of the fluids that are interconnected by certain lines to constantly be interacting. So very much like plumbing in your house, you put valves into the lines so that we can shut off certain parts of the plumbing and use other parts. That valving is carried out by putting membranes in the fluid channel and that membrane really exploits a lot about what we know about nanoscale deformation or nanoscale bulging of membranes. So, that’s one aspect of nanotech.
“Another aspect is if you’re going to do a separation of various components in some particular sample, blood sample, and want to separate proteins, this is done by chromatography which uses glass beads that are on the order of 10 to 30 microns in diameter. But pores running through beads almost like wormed apple are on the order of nanometers. Hundres of nanometers. So, the very essence of this separation procedure that is carried out in microchannels is essentially exploiting what we know about separation of very small and large molecules in these nanoscale pores that are in the beads.”
He added, “It’s looking at small segments of a person’s DNA on the order of 2 – 1000 bases and the particular signature that you get from being able to look at the sequence of the bases, what the actual code is in sequences of DNA from individual will tell you that it either correlates with disease like cancer or some other inherited genetic disease, or being perfectly normal at which point you have a negative result which is good news for the patient.”
the study of our dna has led to many revolations and benifits i just wonder why behavioral studies linking violent behavior and mental problems is so suppressed and such a taboo topic.