lab-on-a-chip

“Lab on a chip” technique may be able to detect oral cancer

Source: http://www.dental-tribune.com/ Author: Dental Tribune International staff Researchers from British University of Sheffield, and Rice University in Houston, Texas, are conducting a clinical trial on a revolutionary technique for diagnosing oral cancer more quickly and effectively. The “lab on a chip” device could be used by a dentist to determine whether a patient has oral cancer or other abnormalities in less than 20 minutes. Over the past 18 months, 275 patients have taken part in a trial of the device in order to detect oral cancer in suspicious lesions. The traditional procedure involves using a scalpel to perform a biopsy and off-site laboratory tests that can be time-consuming. The new procedure involves removing cells with a brush, placing them on a chip and inserting the chip into an analyser, which yields a result in a matter of minutes. This offers a number of benefits, including reduced waiting times and patient visits. Patients are currently being tested with the new device, which is being compared to the standard biopsy procedure to test its accuracy and reliability. Martin Thornhill, Professor of Oral Medicine at the University of Sheffield and Honorary Consultant in Oral Medicine at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This new technology is an exciting development in the search for quicker and more effective diagnosis of oral cancer. The current procedure we have for making a diagnosis—taking a biopsy—can take a week or more to produce results and can involve extra visits from patients. With our new [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-04-18T20:14:30-07:00April, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Rice wins NIH funding for oral-cancer test

Source: www.nanotech-now.com Author: staff The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded researchers in Rice University's new BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) a $2 million Grand Opportunity (GO) grant to develop a fast, inexpensive test for oral cancer that a dentist could perform simply by using a brush to collect a small sample of cells from a patient's mouth. "We want to provide an accurate diagnosis for oral cancer in less than 30 minutes using a minimally invasive test that requires no scalpels or off-site lab tests," said principal investigator John McDevitt, Rice's Brown-Wiess Professor in Bioengineering and Chemistry. "The payoff for this could be tremendous because oral cancers today are typically diagnosed much too late in their development." NIH established the GO grant program to support projects that address large, specific research endeavors that are likely to deliver near-term growth and investment in biomedical research and development, public health and health care delivery. GO grant funding was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. If oral cancer is detected early, the prognosis for patients is excellent, with a five-year survival rate of more than 90 percent. Unfortunately, the actual five-year survival rate for oral squamous cell carcinoma is only about 50 percent, among the lowest rates for all major cancers. Oral squamous cell carcinoma affects about 300,000 people per year worldwide, and most cases are diagnosed in their late stages. The new test is possible because of a novel microchip invented in McDevitt's lab. This "lab-on-a-chip" uses the latest [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-05T13:38:46-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Scientists Develop Sensitive Salivary Sensor

Source: Kansas City Infozine (www.infozine.com) Author: staff For people who dislike needles, medical tests that require a drop of saliva instead of a vial of blood will one day make a trip to a doctor or dentist much easier. But as scientists now construct the first of these saliva tests for early signs of cancer and other diseases, they continue to push the technological envelope in interesting ways. As published in the August issue of the journal "Biosensors and Bioelectronics," a team of researchers supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, report they have developed an ultra-sensitive optical protein sensor, a first for a salivary diagnostic test. The sensor can be integrated into a specially designed lab-on-a-chip, or microchip assay, and preprogrammed to bind a specific protein of interest, generating a sustained fluorescent signal as the molecules attach. A microscope then reads the intensity of the fluorescent light -- a measure of the protein's cumulative concentration in the saliva sample -- and scientists gauge whether it corresponds with levels linked to developing disease. In their initial experiments, the scientists primed the optical protein sensor to detect the IL-8 protein, which at higher than normal concentration in saliva is linked to oral cancer. Using saliva samples from 20 people -- half healthy, the others diagnosed with oral cancer -- the sensor correctly distinguished in all cases between health and disease. Importantly, the sensor achieved a limit of detection for IL-8 [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-08-04T17:13:40-07:00August, 2008|Oral Cancer News|