Within a few years testing yourself for cancer could be as simple as testing your blood sugar or taking a home pregnancy test, experts believe.
Chemists at The Ohio State University are in the process of developing paper strips that detect a number of diseases, including cancer and malaria.
The strips, which cost around 50 cents per strip, require just a drop of blood.
Once the blood is applied to the paper strip, the idea is that people would send the strips to a laboratory on a regular basis.
It would mean people would only have to see a doctor if a test comes out positive.
Within a few years tests for cancer and other diseases could be as simple as testing your blood sugar level or taking a home pregnancy test, scientists at The Ohio State University believe. They hope the paper strips, pictured above, will offer a cheap alternative to current diagnostic tests
The researchers, led by Dr Abraham Badu-Tawiah, were accurate even a month after the blood sample was taken, proving they could work for people living in remote areas.
Dr Badu-Tawiah came up with the idea as a way to get cheap malaria diagnoses into the hands of people in rural Africa and southeast Asia.
In those regions of the world, the disease kills hundreds of thousands of people and infects hundreds of millions every year.
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But, Dr Badu-Tawiah says the test can be tailored to detect any disease for which the human body produces antibodies, including ovarian cancer and cancer of the large intestine.
The patent-pending technology could bring disease diagnosis to people who need it most – those who do not have regular access to a doctor and can’t afford regular visist.
‘We want to empower people,’ he said. ‘If you care at all about your health and you have reason to worry about a condition, then you don’t want to wait until you get sick to go to the hospital.
‘You could test yourself as often as you want.’
Experts say the test can be tailored to detect any disease for which the human body produces antibodies, including ovarian cancer (depicted) and cancer of the large intestine
The technology uses wax ink to trace the outline of channels and reservoirs on the paper strips.
The wax penetrates the paper and forms a waterproof barrier to capture the blood sample and keep it between the layers.
One 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper is capable of holding dozens of individual tests that can then be cut apart into strips, each a little larger than a postage stamp.
Dr Badu-Tawiah said: ‘To get tested, all a person would have to do is put a drop of blood on the paper strip, fold it in half, put it in an envelope and mail it.’
The strips, though similar to home pregnancy kits, do differ.
Pregnancy tests are coated in enzymes or gold nanoparticles to make the paper change color.
In the case of the strips, the paper contains small synthetic chemical probes that carry a positive charge.
It is these ‘ionic’ probes that allow ultra-sensitive detection by a handheld mass spectrometer.
‘Enzymes are picky,’explained Dr Badu-Tawiah.
‘They have to be kept at just the right temperature and they can’t be stored dry or exposed to light.
‘But the ionic probes are hardy. They are not affected by light, temperature, humidity – even the heat in Africa can’t do anything to them.
‘So you can mail one of these strips to a hospital and know that it will be readable when it gets there.’
He and his colleagues, postdoctoral researchers Suming Chen and Qiongqiong Wan, successfully demonstrated they could detect protein biomarkers from the most common malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is most prevalent in Africa.
They also successfully detected the protein biomarker for ovarian cancer, known as cancer antigen 125, and the carcinoembryonic antigen, which is a marker for cancer of the large intestine, among other cancers.
After confirming the tests worked, the researchers stored them away and retested them every few days to see if the signal detected would fade over time.
They discovered the signal was just as strong after 30 days as on day one, meaning the disease proteins were stable and detectable even after one month.
In the case of malaria, the human and financial costs are high, especially in Africa, researchers say. The strips could cost as little as 50 cents, less if they are mass produced, offering a cheap way to test for malaria, which UNICEF estimates costs the continent $12 billion a year in lost workforce
Dr Badu-Tawiah said the fact the tests survive more than long enough to reach a lab by mail, mean they could open up a new world of medical care for people in rural areas.
And they could even have real benefits in places like the US, allowing people living in cities to test themselves without incurring the cost of seeing a doctor.
In the US the tests could prove particularly useful for people with a family history of cancer, or those who have undergone successful cancer treatment.
Instead of waiting to visit a doctor every six months to confirm they are still in remission, past patients could test themselves at home more frequently.
In the case of malaria, the human and financial costs are high, especially in Africa.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by parasites.
The infection starts with flulike symptoms that can develop into kidney failure or other complications.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were 214 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2015, and 438,000 people died–mostly children in Africa.
‘In Africa, malaria is so common that whenever you get feverish, the first thing you think is, “Oh, it’s probably malaria”,’ Dr Badu-Tawiah said.
While the prototype test strips at Ohio State cost about 50 cents each to produce, those costs would likely go down with mass production, he said.
The greatest cost of using the strips would fall to urban medical facilities, which would have to purchase mass spectrometers to read the results.
Model portable instruments can cost $100,000 but less expensive handheld mass specs are under development.
Researchers hope to be able to test the strips in a clinical setting within three years. In the meantime they are working to make the tests more sensitive, in the hope one day they could require either saliva or urine to produce the same result
Still, Badu-Tawiah pointed out, an initial investment in mass specs would be more than offset by the potential boon to Africa’s economy.
UNICEF estimates that malaria costs the continent $12 billion in lost worker productivity every year.
In the United States, where mass spectrometers are more common, the cost savings would come in the form of reduced insurance use and fewer out-of-pocket expenses from going to the doctor less often.
‘Although this approach requires an initial investment, we believe the low-cost paper-based consumable devices will make it sustainable,’ Dr Badu-Tawiah said.
‘We can set one small instrument at a grocery store, then sell the paper strips for just 50 cents per test. The same for Africa, and perhaps much cheaper there.’
Dr Badu-Tawiah hopes to be able to test the strips in a clinical setting within three years.
In the meantime his team are working to make the tests more sensitive, in the hope one day they could require either saliva or urine to produce the same result.
The findings are published in the Journal of American Chemical Society.