Lab on a Chip Transforms Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment
Nanotechnology has enabled medical treatments that were unthinkable just a decade ago. Thanks to a tiny fabricated device called a Lab on a Chip, Purdue University scientists can now target and capture individual tumor cells, using only a blood sample from a cancer patient. This can potentially be a game-changer - not just for diagnosing cancer, but potentially for testing individualized therapies on those cells in a laboratory, before using them on a patient in real life.
Transcript
00:00:00 About half a million people die every year, just in the United States, because of cancer. Currently the tests that they have to go through are either expensive, or invasive, or painful. And this makes it difficult for them to go through these tests frequently. Micro and nanotechnology have enabled certain capabilities that just were not available to people before. This method that we are working on
00:00:25 hunts down these little cells, just from a blood sample. Lab on a Chip is a very general concept. Basically miniaturization of chemical and/or biological analysis on a relatively small platform, which is conveniently called a chip. Many of these devices that we fabricate are fabricated using the same techniques that are used to fabricate microprocessors, for example. And so we also call them chips, even though they may not be electronic devices.
00:01:00 They do all sorts of functions, from catching molecules, amplifying DNA, visualizing cells. We have a Lab on a Chip system that can detect very rare tumor cells present in the blood sample of a cancer patient. Basically capturing the cells and bringing them down onto a chip's surface and allowing the user to visualize these cells using fluorescent microscopy. You can count them. Just their number gives you information
00:01:30 about whether the disease is coming back. You can further take these cells and you can culture them. And you can test drugs on them in the lab before trying the drug on the patient himself. Personalized therapy, specific just for that person. It may not work well on another patient, but on that particular patient it will work. It basically allows you to do this biopsy without having to cut into the person to remove a solid tumor. It's all based on a blood test.
00:01:57 It could be a total game changer. And all of that from a blood sample. The stakes are very high actually. You can make huge impact on people's quality of life. What else can you really ask for, right? And that's really the biggest motivator for me at the moment.