Jodie Sinnema
Sun
EDMONTON — The University of Alberta has created a miniature lab-on-a-chip that will allow doctors to quickly figure out which chemotherapy will work best for a patient, allowing them to tailor treatments to achieve the best results.
Currently, such tests aren’t available to most patients, since they cost about $1,000 each and require a $1 million machine to detect chromosomal mutations that show up in certain cancer cells.
That means patients are forced to take a variety of drugs and treatments, hoping they won’t suffer adverse side effects.
But a research team at the University of Alberta has created a tiny chip test that allows doctors to see in one day abnormalities that appear in cancerous bone marrow, blood or tumour cells.
They can then personalize treatment, make sure it’s working properly and quickly determine if a cancer has come back after remission.
The chip can hold up to 10 cell samples, with each test costing about $100 instead of $1,000. A shoebox-sized machine needed to study the samples costs only $1,000, a price that even small clinics in rural areas could afford.
The new technology will democratize and revolutionize cancer treatment, said Linda Pilarski, a cancer researcher leading the chip projects.
“It’s a lab anywhere,” Pilarski said. She and her team already have a patent pending on the technology, which will still take about five years to reach patients in clinics or doctors’ offices.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
