Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and - Center for ...

John McDevitt
Tomasz Tkaczyk
Rebecca Richards-Kortum
Lon Wilson
14
Diagnostics
Professor McDevitt has developed lab-ona-chip
technology to diagnose and treat patients
with HIV/AIDS by determining their
CD4 cell levels quickly at the point of care.
The chip technology replaces a $50,000
dishwasher-sized instrument with a toaster-sized
device that costs about the same
as a digital camera. When CD4 cell testing
is done regularly and used to determine
the appropriate therapy, life expectancy in
HIV/AIDS patients can increase by up to
300 percent.
McDevitt and his team of researchers at
Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative
are also using the lab-on-a-chip technology
to process saliva, yielding on-the-spot
results for heart attack and oral cancer
screening. The nano-bio-chip is currently
being employed at the Michael E.
DeBakey VA Medical Center to test for
heart attack patients. Chest pain brings
about 5 million patients to U.S. emergency
rooms each year, but 80 percent of those
patients are not suffering heart attacks.
The saliva screening for heart attacks will
save lives, time and money by allowing
doctors to identify those suffering from a
heart attack before administering a battery
of costly tests.
Assistant Professor Tomasz Tkaczyk and
Professor Richards-Kortum are also developing
lab-on-a-chip technologies to detect
viral load. These sensors are battery powered,
fit on top of a penny and can reduce
the cost of equipment to between $10
and $100. These technologies hold promise
for meeting the challenge of diagnosing
HIV-infected babies, who require very
expensive tests different from those used
on adults. Specialized HIV tests for infants
have the potential to save the lives of
more than 275,000 children each year.
Professor Wilson specializes in the medical
applications of fullerenes and ultrashort
carbon nanotubes. When filled with traditional
contrast elements like gadolinium
ions, iron oxide or iodine, the resultant
nano-contrast agent provides as much as
40 times more contrast in MRI and X-ray
imaging. The increased contrast provides a
mechanism to detect smaller tumors earlier,
thereby decreasing mortality rates.