Non-invasive imaging technique for detecting breast cancer

Blurb (please click the link on top to access the complete report):

Micrometastases derived from breast cancer is extremely hard to detect using conventional methods (X-ray or mammograms) and usually requires highly invasive biopsies to remove various tissue samples from the patient for further diagnosis and corroboration. However, scientists from Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute from Tampa, Florida have devised a new method for detecting advanced stage breast cancer.

The authors of the study showed that compared to normal breast tissue, breast cancer cells are known to produce high amounts of a protein termed carbonic anhydrase isozymes IX and XII, membrane bound enzymes involved in regulating the pH of blood and extracellular fluid. It is believed that the high levels of this enzyme can protect breast cancer cells from low oxygen levels and other toxicities compared to normal tissue.

The authors of the study, published in Clinical Cancer Research two days ago, came up with a very innovative way and non-invasive way of detecting breast cancer tissue. They produced an antibody specific for this two enzymes and conjugated the antibody to an infrared excitable dye. Indeed, the antibody conjugated to the dye is highly specific.


Continue reading on Examiner.com Non-invasive imaging technique for detecting advanced breast cancer - Pittsburgh Medical Technology | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/medical-technology-in-pittsburgh/non-invasive-imaging-technique-for-detecting-advanced-breast-cancer#ixzz1bidzglw0

Can viruses be designed from scratch using simple software applications to fight infectious diseases?

This is an idea that just spawned on me yesterday. The lines between the non-living and living have been blurred and there are some many ways that computers will assist us in many aspects of our lives. Right now, there are chip implants that have been testes in rats to improve memory and cereballar function and have been succesfully tested in Israel. It may be soon before new brain inferfaces will come out the market to help people with speaking disabilities or quadraplegic individuals.

Imaging having the ability to design new viruses to seek and destroy infectious bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics or design multiple viruses that can be used for gene therapy?

There are many viruses called phages that have the ability to infect and destroy bacteria including infectious bacteria (Staphylococcus and Streptococcus). The genomes of bacteriophages are relatively small compared to bacteria. Hence, designing viruses from scratch is not a far-fetched idea and the commercial software to create new synthetic viruses from scratch using synthetic genomics and modular gene design applications may all be possible with the click of an iPad or notebook within a few years.

Currently, scientists and clinicians can design and order small pieces of DNA called oligonucleotides or primers (20 to 30 base pairs ) that can be used to amplify DNA through PCR. These small and large biotech companies take orders over the Internet and synthesize DNA of up to 100- 150 bases (DNA has four bases) within two days.



DNA is the information that encodes for life and can be designed and stored as analog data in computers. On the other hand, what about synthesizing complete artificial genomes of viruses and bacteria? Is that even possible?

Nowadays, a few companies in the world such as Blue Heron can be contracted to design the genomes of not just new viruses, but bacteria and even mitochondrial genomes. Dr. Craig Venter and his team from Synthetic Genomics have generated and synthesized the genomes of different bacteria (Mycobacterium) from scratch and this process involves putting together many pieces of 1000 base pairs at a time to produce an artificial bacterial genome that was successfully transplanted onto another bacteria. Moreover, Dr Venter is on the verge of sequencing the genomes of thousands of marine algae and bacteria from across different parts of the world. When all this DNA information from all these microorganisms becomes available with the next two years, this information will give the necessary insight to the scientific community to fully understand genes and other pieces that were once unknown. For instance, many new antibiotics or even classes of anti-fungals may be discovered during Dr. Venter's acquatic quest around the world that can be used to destroy multi-drug resistant bacteria such as multi-drug resistant tuberculosis or MRSA.

Dr. Venter's accomplishment proves that the boundaries of biotechnology can be pushed significantly to the extent that viruses and bacteria can be synthesized de novo using a simple computers, software and robotic paltforms that are used to design and assemble viruses from scratch. Cloning pieces of DNA is not required to do this as synthesizing new DNA will be much faster than cutting and pasting different DNA coding regions as conventionally done in the research lab.

There are many commercially and freely available software such as Vector NTI that can analyze , organize, label DNA regions from thousands of base pairs belonging to a variety of organisms including that of viruses, mice, rat, worms, and humans. Moreover, all these genomes are available for free and can be downloaded from NCBI.

Moreover, bioinformatics software can be used to find genes of interests, non-coding regions or promoters which can give any researcher the necessary tools to design new genomes from scratch. However simplistic this may sound, synthesizing DNA using a DNA sequence that contains millions of base pair that was originally designed using computer software is very significant in that the fields of computer science and biology have given rise to cyber-genomics.

A brave new DNA world

The genomes of many bacteriophages are known and many of these bacteriophages have the ability to infect bacteria such as lambda X174 which infects E. coli. Viruses/bacteriphages can be found in the millions in the ocean. The problem is being able to isolate these bacteriophages for mass production is tedious and time consuming. For instance, right now there is a bacteriophage that infects Listeria monocytogenes is currently available for treating and protecting cheeses. However, the process of generating bacteriphages from scratch is possible using a synthetic genomics approach and the cost to do that will be feasible within a few years. Moreover, there is only a few companies that have proprietary software to do that.

Hence, it is possible that commercially available software to design new viruses from scratch through modular genetics may be soon available and can may be used by common computer processors and even iPads which lend the possibility of creating this type of software for genetic engineers, clinicians, scientists and even public health officials. Once a virus is designed that specifically attacks only one type of infectious bacterial strain, then the DNA code can be securely uploaded over the Internet to companies dedicated to synthesizing DNA and ship the viral genome back to client. The new synthetic viral DNA can be used to produce mass quantities of bacteria-chopping viruses in the lab by infecting human epithelial cells and concentrate the virus in extremely small volumes.

What about producing new antibiotics?

Moreover, these new viruses can be used to not only produce more viruses that infect infectious bacteria but also produce new classes of antibiotics if such type of antibiotics in the ocean. Phages may have the ability to destroy biofilms that are hard to remove by mechanical debridement and reach the center of the thick biofilm.

Dr. Craig Venter received the Dickson Prize in Medicine today and offered insights on how synthesizing DNA can solve many world problems

Dr. Craig Venter, the biotech entrepreneur who helped sequence the human genome and developed the shotgun sequencing technique, received the Dickson Prize in medicine today at the University of Pittsburgh, Alumni Hall. During his presentation, he briefly talked about his career, offered a historical perspective of how the DNA (3 billion base pairs) was read in its entirety ten years ago using the shotgun sequencing approach and demonstrated how his company can literally create artificial genomes from scratch using supercomputers and robotic platforms. Overall, his presentation was easy to follow for the lay person but offered very valuable insight of how his new technology will help to solve many world problems. After attending today’s presentation, I am convinced that Dr. Craig Venter has risen to the level of Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace) in the biotech industry for the following reasons outlined below: Dr. Venter has been able to merge the fields of biology, microbiology, biochemistry and computer science to create life from scratch by using supercomputers, DNA sequencers (HiSeq2000 and ABS300XL) in order to read DNA and write DNA. Moreover, his team developed the software and hardware to be able to synthesize new microbes from scratch or making hybrids of microorganisms that have a different set of genes. It is interesting to note that Dr. Venter relates many phenomena that occurs in biology to the field of computer science. DNA is the software that can be read by computers to convert that information to analog data (strings of 1’s and 0’s), and write DNA again using supercomputers/ DNA synthesizers while other microorganisms “boot up” the new "installed" DNA in order to produce new proteins or create a new species of bacteria. Technology is evolving too fast and is helping to significantly reduce the cost to read/write DNA. To put it in perspective, the human genome can be sequenced in less than two weeks for $4,000 using supercomputers the size of less than 3 feet by 3 feet and containing powerful 1.5 terabyte chips. He predicts that the cost will significantly go down and may be able to sequence human genomes in less than two days within five years. Overall, he has very ambitious but medically relevant and revolutionary goals he wants to accomplish. These are some of the highlights of his past accomplishments and future goals of Dr. Venter's company, Synthetic Genomics Inc.. 1. Dr. Craig Venter and his team were the first to sequence a diploid human genome 3 years ago. 2. He has taken on an ambitious project to study human DNA diversity: by sequencing hundreds of genomes from individuals from Africa and Europe, his team of investigators have found that there is 1-3% DNA variation among individuals outside of Africa and most of that variation is found in non-coding pieces of DNA. Oddly enough, there is a much higher DNA variation among different human beings from different groups in Africa than outside of Africa. Not sure what that means. 3. By sampling air from the 22nd floor of a building in New York, he found that 50% of DNA found in the air of New York was DNA derived from rats (probably from subway rats that shed hair/skin), 20-25% of DNA is derived from humans and the rest from other sources. He was boasting on the fact that the air in San Diego is cleaner as the DNA was derived from fungi, bacteria and human sources (epithelial cells shed by humans on a daily basis). He also sample DNA from different homes and hospitals from San Diego and found that hospitals harbored many infectious microorganisms compared to a residence. No surprise there either. He has sequenced entire genomes from microorganisms derived from ocean, the Red Sea, Black Sea and other parts of the world. In a nutshell, he discovered thousands of new genes with no known function and may take years to figure out what they do. Also, he claimed that he will propose a new classification scheme for classifying microorganisms by next year based on this data. On other projects, he has helped to sequence DNA genomes from gut bacteria (microbiota genomics project) derived from different individuals and has found that the human body contains about 16 million bacterial genes. 4. On more pragmatic biotech approaches, he is the first to synthesize a complete genome of a virus (lambdaX174) from scratch using supercomputers and robotic platforms and has learned a way to "boot up" by activating the virus and giving it the ability to infect and destroy bacteria. He has synthesized the most simple living microorganism (Mycoplasma) from scratch, and "transplanted" the DNA of one species of Mycoplasma to completely change another species after the genetic code has been "booted up". Interestingly, he has synthesized mitochondrial rat DNA from scratch and has refined a technique to allow yeast to store complete genomes of bacteria and transfer the new artificial DNA to other recipient bacteria. To quell some ethical concerns, he claims that all his artificial microbes have a watershed mark in which the name of this company and authors are imprinted in the genetic code of each organism's DNA in order to trace organisms that may get lost outside a lab. Obviously, only he has the original template to crack the code. Finally, he explained the ethical implications and the need for regulating this technology if it gets FDA approval for accelerating the production of new vaccines by synthesizing pieces of DNA and produce vaccines targets to produce vaccines. 5. On the more ambitious side: he plans to help solve world hunger and mass produce biofuels by synthesizing microorganisms from scratch that can produce sugars (starch), amino acids, vitamins and organisms that can use CO2 emissions from the air and produce methane, hydrocarbons or biofuels.

Zoldrenic acid increases survival rate among stage IV cancer women

It is breast cancer awareness month and we need to do everything as a community to combat this deadly disease. This news just came to my attention about the use of zoldrenic acid, a drug for treating osteoporosis, may increase survival in postmenopausal stage IV cancer women.The increase in survival rate is low but significant to placebo control group but never-the-less significant. Here is an excerpt of the summarized findings of today's article at the National Cancer Institute:

"A planned subset analysis of a phase III trial showed that adding zoledronic acid, a bisphosphonate, to standard adjuvant therapy for stage II or III breast cancer may improve outcomes in postmenopausal women. Overall, among the entire trial population of 3,360 women, the addition of zoledronic acid did not improve outcomes. However, among a subset of women who had undergone menopause 5 or more years before study entry, the 5-year overall survival rate was 85 percent for those who received zoledronic acid, compared with 79 percent for those treated with standard adjuvant therapy alone. These findings from the AZURE trial were published online September 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented the same day at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress. In the full study population, there were 17 confirmed and 9 suspected cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw in the zoledronic acid group and none in the control group. The benefit in overall survival among postmenopausal women “is a small but significant increase,” said principal investigator Dr. Robert Coleman in a news release. The finding is not conclusive on its own but “in the context of other studies and additional data anticipated later in the year,” he believes it may change practice".

More National Cancer Institute News: http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/100411/page3?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncicancerbulletin+%28NCI+Cancer+Bulletin%29#e

iPad and iPhone applications for diabetes management

As many people with diabetes have used a variety of different glucometers, insulin pumps and other gadgets to control sugar levels, there are not that many nice applications that can put all the data together for the doctor to see in a very user friendly forma. I decided to do a quick research on currently available iPhone and iPad applications for people with diabetes. We can agree that the days of recording and monitoring insulin levels, calories and sugar levels on paper are long gone. As more diabetes related medical devices such as insulin pumps and glucose meters are becoming more compatible with PCs, Macs and cell phones, the trend will likely increase over the next decade as it is projected that over more than 30 million Americans will suffer from either Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. The market projections for developing more diabetic medical devices and user friendly software is expected to net billions of dollars for pharmaceutical and software companies. Have no fear, the advent of new technologies that can interface with your glucose pumps, cell phones, desktops, iPad and laptops will be more practical to successfully monitor your health, exercise regimens and insulin intake. Today, if you have an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or an Android phone, you can download applications from your phone from iTunes, the Applestore, freeware sites and other websites for under $5.00 Here are a few applications listed here for starters. All these applications can be obtained through iTunes for less than $5.00! 1. Glucose buddy- This application lets you keep track and record your daily glucose levels, insulin intake, exercise regimens and provides basic statistical analyses of trends and averages. You can interact with the Glucose buddy forum to network with other people through the Internet. It is worth noting that their bar graphs are very colorful and enticing to see. This application is available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod. 2. WaveSense - Probably the most popular diabetes application to date from AgaMatrix. This application also allows you to log and record your glucose levels, calories, exercise regimen and take personal notes. It provides a better statistical analysis of daily, weekly, and monthly averages and projections. High, low, mode, variability, scatter plots, bar graphs, etc... are one of the few statistical analyses provided. You can directly send your results to your physician for their perusal.This application is also available for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. 3. OnTrack - Like the other aforementioned applications, this application allows you to lose monitor your pulse, blood pressure, weight and body fat which also makes it a useful weight loss application. Moreover, it provides basic statistical analyses and allows you to track your glucose and insulin levels. It is available for $2.00 and is extremely user friendly as results can be exported via e-mail to your medical team. This application is only available for the Android. 4. Vree-- This new application from Merck lets you also monitor and record your blood glucose levels, exercise, weight, blood pressure, and food and other medication intake. On the plus side, it comes with an encyclopedia calorie counter, tips and articles for weight loss and nutrition. On the downside, it does not come with a built-in feature to monitor insulin doses. This application is also available for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Also, a few reviews have complained about the lack of a feature that allows you to monitor and send data more than 1 week's worth of data to your doctor. 5.Diabetes Tracker- Like all the other applications, it allows you to monitor your glucose levels, insulin levels, calories and exercise activities. However, this application allows you to track different types of insulin (slow, regular and fast insulin) throughout the day, gives you more statistical analysis, trends and projections. It is available for the Android for $1.49. More to come:IBGstar Diabetes Manager- This is the default application for the IBGstar glucose meter, a peripheral device that directly attaches to the iPhone4 to measure your glucose levels. It will provide a log function to record glucose and insulin levels, an alert system to alert you of important scheduled glucose reading and insulin shots, a trend chart for statistical analysis feature for calculating your daily, monthly and weekly trends and emails your results to your physician. This powerful application is expected to cost around $50.00 but provides more powerful statistical analyses of bio-stats, has better pull-down and touchscreen menu and interfaces with your laptop and desktop via the iPhone 4. It will hit the Apple store soon on March. Bottomline- The only thing or important feature missing in all iPhone and Android diabetes applications is the ability for the software to calculate the projected basal insulin levels in order to know how much insulin to inject before and after meals. However, fancy and "smart" applications that give this kind of projections require complex algorithms and only your physician can readjust the basal insulin intake. Did you find this article interesting? Will you like to receive more email alerts about medical technology related news? Then consider subscribing to my blog. If you have a blog, I will follow back!

Simple blood test can predict Alzheimer's disease with high accuracy

Alzheimer's disease is a really devastating disease of the brain with no present cure or therapy to slow down the progression of the disease. Although there is no cure at the moment, the diagnostics of the disease have significantly improved and scientists. For example, the combination of fluorescent dyes  (Pittsburgh B compound) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a key diagnostic tool for predicting the outcome of the disease about 10 years before a patient develops symptoms. Now the first time have discovered that measuring two fatty acids or lipids in the bloodstream is correlated with a higher chance of cognitive decline. This simple blood test is faster, and probably more reliable than an MRI. One of these lipids is ceramide and the higher the lipid is found in the blood the higher the probability of developing dementia.  However, this type of diagnosis can help the patient by providing intensive therapy for those patients are highest risk but can also open the door for a lot of controversy as many small and large employers and even insurance companies may not be willing to hire people at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or may drop their medical coverage all together years before developing the disease.

Read the complete article that was posted today on Medical News:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/235462.php

This is amazing! It will be soon before quadraplegics and other paralized people will be able to walk with the assistance of robotic legs. Cyberdyne in Japan seems to have developed a prototype of prosthetic legs that may come out the market soon for handicap people. It is called the HAL cyberwalker or robot walker.

 Currently the US army has developed an exoskeleton similar to this but applied for the whole body so that soldiers can lift heavy load of supplies in a much faster and efficient way.

Please click on the link below to get the information of this article from Techradar posted today:

HAL Cyberwalker: http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/hal-robot-walker-shown-off-at-ceatec-2011-1031116?src=rss&attr=all

Anyone can become a neuroscientist and run cheap experiments in their own backyard!

Due to recent draconian cuts that were implemented by many states across the US, all state-funded universities and colleges will suffer draconian cuts from 10-15% of their total operating budget to upto 30% for landgrant universities. For instance, the University of Pittsburgh has been hit with a drastic decrease in state funding while the Community College of Allegheny County will see county and state funding reduced by at least two million dollars. While the current economic recession may have a negative impact on employment and finances of many families across the United States, other people are coming up with innovative ideas to start their own companies to produce products with practical uses. This is an interesting case of a small company called BackyardBrains, a spin-off company that started at the University of Michigan. Backyard brains was initially developed by a group of electrical, software, and bio-engineers who teamed up and came up with an interesting idea of helping to teach neuroscience to middle schools, highschools and colleges across the United States by building cheap and easy-to-use educational products that teach the basic principles of neuroanatomy.
   The company has sold over more than 250 SpikerBox products this year and has already received an NIH educational grant ($450,000) to develop educational curricula that can be implemented in highshools and colleges across the US and to further refine their products. Moreover, the Society for Neuroscience may advocate for the implementation of cheap lab products/ reagents that can be used in highschools and colleges to help educate the public on neuroscience and brain-related diseases across the country. The main goal of the company was to develop a low budget product that enabled students to learn the basic principles of how neurons communicate, receive sensory input and send out electrochemical impulses (also called action potentials). After many long year of labor and brainstorming, Backyard Brains finally developed their first open-source product called SpikerBox. This neat, sleek and small device is a small box that contains a pair of electrodes that record electrophysiological activity, a whole bunch of silicon based resistors, output and inlet outlets, screws, electrical amplifier, structural support rods, switches and speakers batteries. The SpikerBox records the electrical activity from pieces of tissue and converts the electrical activity emanated by neurons (motor or sensory) into acoustic signals (noise) that can be then analyzed and interpreted as neuronal activity. This neat product is currently sold for $89.00 USD, comes with a manual and other spare parts. The electrical data (spikes) that is recorded from the SpikerBox can be downloaded into a laptop or hooked to your iPhone using an application that can be downloaded for free. The data can be analyzed to measure the number and amplitude of spikes per millisecond and make conclusions about the effects of temperature, chemical solutions, hormones, sensory input (moving bristles or hair on the cockroach leg) or electrical stimulation. Also, the company sells other accessories that attach to the Spikerbox such as laptop cables. Please feel free to see a Youtube video demonstration showing the features of SpikerBox located on the left hand side of the article. Although it may not be the best "animal model" compared to a frog or rat, the company encourages the use of coackroaches (Blaberus discoidalis) as an insect model to study neurophysiology as it relates to the human body. The cockroaches are grown and sold by the company as well. The advantages of using the cockroach is that they are cheaper, smaller, can be weaned, reproduce faster than rats and have the ability to re-grow the appendages that are dissected for each experiment performed. Indeed, standard electrophysiological equipment used by neurobiologists to patch pieces of tissue or even cells (patch clamping) can cost from $3,000 upto $10,000. So simply hook the two electrodes of the spiker box into a dissected and immobilized leg of a coackroach (do not worry, they can grow back), turn on the switch and you will soon hear the popping and crackling sounds of electrical activity! The company has a sample laboratory manual that all K12 educators or even high school professors can use as an initial guide to teach neurobiology to students. However, the lab manual is very coarse and bare and is available for editing and sketching by other experts in the field. As the company develops, it is certain that more and more colleges will implement neurophysiology as part of their educational curricula in order to educate the public on the principles of how neurons from the brain (or ganglia in the case of insects) receive sensory input, relay the information through peripheral nerves and cause muscles to twitch in order to produce locomotion. A second product being under development by BackyardBrains is Roboroach, a roach containing several electrical devices surgically implemented into the insect which allows the user study neurotechnology and locomotion in vivo.

What does this news have to do with medical technology? Well, pretty much everything. By studying how certain chemicals, pesticides, natural products, liquid medicines or toxins on neuronal activity and muscle movement , one can perform cheap toxicology and neurobiology experiments that have relevance to human physiology and health. So if you are the parent a high school or middle school kid, please encourage your school officials to support buying cheap scientific equipment like the Spikerbox in order to promote neuroscience research and elevate the quality of education.

To learn more about the products sold by this company, please click on the following links here Did you find this article interesting?

     

Image obtained from: www.myblacktravel.com

Lab-on-a-chip may soon be available for the iPhone and iPad

The idea of detecting infectious diseases or diagnosing respiratory diseases using your cell phone is not a far fetched idea. The technology to detect infectious diseases using a lab-on-a-chip in a fast, reliable, and in a cheap way already exists. A study published in the journal of Nature Medicine and other studies that came out on the journal of Lab Chip this month demonstrated how a simple $0.10 polystyrene (plastic) chip can be used to diagnose syphilis and AIDS in the fields of Africa. The technology produced by the authors of this study requires no moving parts, electricity or bulky external instrumentation and is extremely cheap. In brief, each chip can accommodate upto seven blood samples that are loaded onto seven individual channels on the chip. The blood travels through multiple chambers (four detection zones) where the HIV and syphilis antigens (proteins) are bound and immobilized on the surface, mixes with reagents (secondary antibodies) and silver and gold particles mix in the end help to amplify the signal through the reduction of silver. The reduction of silver with gold will emit a signal that does not require amplification as seen with standard enzyme linked assays such as ELISAs. Hence, the authors of this study convincingly showed how the mChips achieve similar sensitivity (detect more true positive

s) and specificity values (less false positives) similar or better to commercial ELISA kits used to detect HIV and syphilis. Also, the whole assay requires less than thirty minutes compared to three hours with standard ELISAS. In the future, mChip can be tailored to diagnose for a myriad of other diseases using this ELISA-like technique. Other wordlwide relevant disease that can be diagnose with this technology include MRSA (Methycillin resistant Streptococcus aereous), influenza viruses, meningitis infections and streptococcal and the nasty rotavirus and noraviruses that cause diarrhea in 50% of children worldwide. There is an exciting suggestion provided by the authors is that a compact reader that can interpret the signals already exists in cell phones. Photodetectors capture photo-signals emitted by the chip are send to LEDs which are relayed to an LCD display (cell phone screen).Only a small peripheral/ module that can attach to the compact readers of a cell phone will have to be designed to connect the polystyrene chip to the cell phone. An iPhone application will have to be developed to measure and interpret the optical density of the results. There are already iPhone applications that can read electrical recordings from neurons and that allows the user to measure beta radiation. iPhone peripherals that are bound to come out the market will help to diagnose the sugar levels for people with diabetes or read ECG signals. Finally, the great news of this study is that the authors provided a basic business plan and suggests different methods for mass producing this cheap technology that can be used in third world countries to easily diagnose STDs. Also, this type of technology is called microfluidics and it is a very marketable and hot field that can produce millions of dollars in revenue for many small companies in the next five years. The technology of these chips will provide the customers to diagnose for a variety of different diseases from biological samples derived from blood, sputum, respiratory secretions and urine samples and the results of the diagnosis will not require a high level of knowledge for interpretation. What is microfluidics and what are the advantages? Lab-on-a-chips employ the principle of enzyme-linked immuno-absorbent assays (ELISA) systems currently employed by research and clinical labs. The principle is very simple. In lamest terms, an unknown amount of antigen is immobilized to a surface (usually polystyrene), and then an antibody is added over the surface for an hour and allowed to bind to the antigen. Unbound excess antibody is washed off with wash buffers several times after which a secondary antibody that is linked an enzyme is overlayed and the reaction is incubated for another hour. In the final step a substance is added that the enzyme can convert to a detectable and quantifiable signal. While a conventional ELISA assay takes about at least three hours to perform by a professional clinical laboratory technician, anyone will be able to uses these devices to perform bio-measurements faster, reliably, more economical and in a matter of approximately less than five minutes at home. Microfluidics is an nano-engineering technique with the goal of producing tiny silicon or glass chips that have thousands tiny passageways and convoluted canals similar to a computer chip but on a bigger scale except that fluid and not electricity flow through the chip. Fluids are drawn and absorbed from different ports (input) and the fluids will travel through the small little canals without the need of electricity but by tension forces produced by fluids. There are many ways to design microfluidics chips and it all depends on the specific need, types of samples to be analyzed and the types of clinical questions that need to be answered. Did you find this article interesting? Will you like to receive more medical technology related news? Please leave a comment or subscribe to my newsletter by clicking the "subscribe" tab located on the top left hand side of my homepage or follow me on Twitter.