So there’s this period of time during a visit to the doctor’s when you’re left alone in the office. You just saw the nurse or PA, and the doctor is playing golf somewhere, so you have to wait in your little paper dress. I was once stranded in that limbo for an hour. Wouldn’t it be nice if that time could be put to good use? Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a microchip that works with nano-materials to detect biomarkers associated with cancer. Bottom line, in about 30 minutes the new biosensor can determine if you’ve got the ‘Big C’. Having already been proven to work with prostate cancer, the device could one day even be adapted to detect HIV, or H1N1 swine flu. Now that’s a good use of my time.

Development of the cancer biosensor was published in ACS, and more recently in Nature Nanotechnology. Shana Kelley, team leader for the project, says that the cancer detection microchip is the size of a fingertip. It and related electronics could fit into a hand held device the size of a Blackberry™. That means the detection of cancer would not only be much quicker (30 minutes vs. days of lab work) but it could be portable and relatively cheap as well. Hand held detection of major diseases and illnesses would revolutionize medicine, making it more accessible and more informative.

The biosensor works by pairing three components: biological detectors, nanowires, and standard silicon chip technology. The biological detectors are attached to the end of nanowires (typically made of gold) and will bond to the biomarkers that indicate the presence of cancer. These biomarkers are strands of micro RNA or messenger RNA produced by the mutated genetics of cancer cells and so the biodetectors are called nucleic acid probes. When the RNA interacts with the nucleic acid probes, electric currents are induced along the gold nanowire. These currents are detected and decoded by the silicon chip technology to determine if cancer is present in a sample.

via New Cancer Detector Chip Works in About 30 Minutes | Singularity Hub.