EL PASO, TX – Researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) have created a portable device capable of detecting colorectal and prostate cancer more cheaply and quickly than current methods.
The university announced that the device is expected to be useful in developing countries, which have higher cancer mortality rates due, in part, to barriers to medical diagnosis.
“Our new biochip device is inexpensive – just a few dollars – and sensitive, which will make accurate disease diagnosis accessible to anyone, rich or poor,” said XiuJun (James) Li, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UTEP.
Li is the lead author of a new study describing the device; it has been published in Lab on a Chip, a journal that focuses on microscale and nanoscale devices.
According to Li, the most widely used commercial method for cancer biomarker detection, known as ELISA, requires expensive instrumentation to function properly and can take twelve hours or more to process a sample. This delay is accentuated in rural areas of the U.S. or in developing countries, he said, because patient samples must be transported to larger cities with specialized instrumentation, contributing to a higher cancer mortality rate.
“If biomarkers can be detected at an early stage, before the cancer spreads, it increases the patient’s chances of survival,” Li said.
The device created by Li’s team is microfluidic, meaning it can perform multiple functions using very small amounts of fluid.
UTEP explained that the device uses an innovative “paper-in-polymer well” structure in which patient blood samples are inserted into tiny wells and onto a special type of paper. The paper captures the cancer protein biomarkers present in the blood samples in just a few minutes. Subsequently, the paper changes color, and the intensity of the color indicates what type of cancer is detected and how far it has progressed.
So far, research has focused on prostate and colorectal cancers, but Li said the method they devised could be applied to a wide variety of cancers.
Li noted that the device can analyze a sample in one hour, compared to 16 hours for some traditional methods. According to the study results, the device is also about 10 times more sensitive than traditional methods, even without using specialized instruments.
Before the device is available to the public, Li said it will be necessary to finalize the prototype of the device and test it on patients in a clinical trial, which could take several years. Before it can be used by physicians, it will need final approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
