Dec. 19, 2012 ? A new device about a stretch of a business label could concede health caring providers to exam for insulin and other blood proteins, cholesterol, and even signs of viral or bacterial infection all during a same time — with one dump of blood. Preliminary tests of a V-chip, combined by scientists during The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and MD Anderson Cancer Center, were usually published by Nature Communications.
“The V-Chip could make it probable to move tests to a bedside, remote areas, and other forms of point-of-care needs,” pronounced Nanomedicine expertise member Lidong Qin, Ph.D., a project’s principal investigator. “V-Chip is accurate, cheap, and portable. It requires usually a dump of a sample, not a vial of blood, and can do 50 opposite tests in one go.”
Similar assays are typically finished regulating heavy, large, formidable apparatus such as mass spectrometers, or need fluoroscopy analysis, that contingency also be finished in a lab.
The V-chip, brief for “volumetric bar-chart chip,” on a other hand, can be carried around in a pocket. It is stoical of dual skinny pieces of glass, about 3 in. by 2 in. In between are wells for 4 things: (1) hydrogen peroxide, (2) adult to 50 opposite antibodies to specific proteins, DNA or RNA fragments, or lipids of interest, and a enzyme catalase, (3) serum or other sample, and (4) a color — any color will do. Initially, a wells are kept apart from any other. A change in a potion plates brings a wells into contact, formulating a contiguous, zig-zagged space from one finish of a V-chip to a other.
As a piece of seductiveness — say, insulin — binds to antibodies firm to a potion slide, catalase is done active and splits circuitously hydrogen peroxide into H2O and oxygen gas. This proceed is called ELISA, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The oxygen pushes a color adult a column. The some-more benefaction insulin is, a some-more oxygen is created, and a over color is pushed adult a slide. Tests uncover that stretch is some-more or reduction proportional to a volume of substrate present, in this example, insulin. The finish outcome is a visible bar chart. Easy to review and accurate, Qin says, yet growth continues.
“The attraction of a V-chip can be softened if narrower and longer bar channels are used,” Qin said. “Our subsequent stairs are to make a device some-more user accessible and be so elementary to use, it hardly needs instructions.”
Qin is also a Weill Cornell Medical College partner highbrow of dungeon and developmental biology.
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The above story is reprinted from materials supposing by Methodist Hospital, Houston, around Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
- Yujun Song, Yuanqing Zhang, Paul E. Bernard, James M. Reuben, Naoto T. Ueno, Ralph B. Arlinghaus, Youli Zu, Lidong Qin. Multiplexed volumetric bar-chart chip for point-of-care diagnostics. Nature Communications, 2012; 3: 1283 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2292
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Source: Health Medicine Network