MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION - Medical Device Daily
MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION - Medical Device Daily
MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION - Medical Device Daily
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140<br />
Nanomaterial enables microchip<br />
to diagnose cancer in under 1 hour<br />
By LYNN YOFFEE<br />
<strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Device</strong> <strong>Daily</strong> Staff Writer<br />
Researchers at the University of Toronto (UT) have<br />
used nanomaterials on a microchip to create a diagnostic<br />
test that’s sensitive enough to identify the type and severity<br />
of a person’s cancer in under an hour. The technology<br />
also is being developed for use to diagnose infectious diseases<br />
with the same speed.<br />
“Today, it takes a room filled with computers to evaluate<br />
a clinically relevant sample of cancer biomarkers and<br />
the results aren’t quickly available,” Shana Kelley, lead<br />
investigator on the project and a co-author of a study<br />
appearing in Nature Nanotechnology, told <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Device</strong><br />
<strong>Daily</strong>. “Our team was able to measure biomolecules on an<br />
electronic chip the size of your fingertip and analyze the<br />
sample within half an hour. The instrumentation required<br />
for this analysis can be contained within a unit the size of a<br />
BlackBerry.”<br />
And the group already has plans to spin out a company<br />
to develop the new test with an eye on getting to market<br />
within five years.<br />
“We designed this platform to be highly sensitive and<br />
practical because we wanted it to be something cheap<br />
enough to manufacture and make it into clinical use,” Kelley<br />
said. “It’s very straightforward microfabrication of the chip.<br />
The chips are outsourced, but what’s special about it is that<br />
we grow nanostructures on the chips. By introducing<br />
nanostructured elements on the chip, we improve sensitivity<br />
of biomolecular detection by many orders of magnitude.<br />
That’s pretty difficult to do without PCR. The platform is<br />
also quite versatile.”<br />
Kelley’s team originally found that conventional, flat<br />
metal electrical sensors were inadequate to sense cancer’s<br />
particular biomarkers, which is why they designed and fabricated<br />
a chip and then decorated it with nanometer-sized<br />
wires and molecular bait.<br />
In addition to applications in cancer, the chip would<br />
have strong use in diagnosing infectious diseases.<br />
“A very important application is in using this platform<br />
for infectious disease diagnosis,” she said. “One of the<br />
advantages is that it’s very fast. We can do our detection<br />
runs in minutes and see the appearance of robust signals.<br />
For infectious disease, it’s time sensitive. For cancer diagnosis,<br />
the next day is usually good enough. But with infectious<br />
disease you want to know that patients’ status immediately,<br />
especially in a hospital setting. That’s what we’re<br />
working very hard on now - to show we can interface our<br />
chips with a way to break up bacteria and get the same kind<br />
of sensitivity to discriminate different pathogens.”<br />
Regarding its original use for cancer, the microchip<br />
senses the signature biomarkers that indicate the presence<br />
<strong>MEDICAL</strong> <strong>DEVICE</strong> <strong>INNOVATION</strong> 2010<br />
of cancer at the cellular level, even though these biomolecules,<br />
which are genes that indicate aggressive or benign<br />
forms of the disease and differentiate subtypes of the cancer,<br />
are typically present only at very low levels in biological<br />
samples.<br />
Results are available in about 30 minutes, compared<br />
with existing tests which yield results in a matter of days.<br />
“We demonstrated that we can use this microchip to<br />
look at RNA samples isolated from cell lines or patient biopsy<br />
samples for prostate cancer,” she said. “We have very<br />
high sensitivity and good specificity when challenging the<br />
platform with heterogeneous samples.”<br />
The actual surface structure of the sensor element is<br />
nanoscale while the features on the chip are microns in<br />
scale.<br />
“The more fine the nanostructure the more sensitive<br />
the device becomes,” Kelley said. “The nanostructures on<br />
the chip boost sensitivity.”<br />
So far her team has worked on small numbers of samples<br />
and is now scaling up to work with much larger batches.<br />
“We’re in the process of figuring out how to get it out of<br />
university lab and into an entity that can refine it,” she said.<br />
“Were’ probably going to spin out a company, but the economic<br />
situation isn’t great now. If it was a few years ago it<br />
would be a lot easier to drum up the money. We think it can<br />
be in the clinic within five years. But it’ll likely be pretty<br />
easy for us to beat that estimate.”<br />
Kelley’s team includes UT engineering professor Ted<br />
Sargent, who is also UT’s Canada Research Chair in<br />
Nanotechnology, along with an interdisciplinary team from<br />
Princess Margaret Hospital (Toronto) and Queen’s<br />
University (Kingston, Ontario).<br />
“Uniting DNA – the molecule of life – with speedy,<br />
miniaturized electronic chips is an example of cross-disciplinary<br />
convergence,” said Sargent. “By working with outstanding<br />
researchers in nanomaterials, pharmaceutical sciences<br />
and electrical engineering, we were able to demonstrate<br />
that controlled integration of nanomaterials provides<br />
a major advantage in disease detection and analysis.”<br />
(This story originally appeared in the Oct. 12, 2009 edition<br />
of <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Device</strong> <strong>Daily</strong>.)<br />
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