Diagnostic microchip provides patients with accurate test results

"This little chip is capable of carrying out the same processes as a large laboratory," said Liv Furuberg and Michal Mielnik of SINTEF, who coordinated the project. "Not only does it perform them faster, but the results are also far more accurate. The doctor simply inserts the card into a little machine, adds a few drops of the sample taken from the patient via a tube in the cardholder, and out come the results." The integrated system is based on microtechnology and biotechnology, and is said to enable a number of conditions to be diagnosed automatically in a doctor's office. The chip is engraved with a number of narrow channels that contain chemicals and enzymes in the correct proportions for each individual analysis. When the patient's sample has been drawn into the channels, these reagants are mixed. "The health chip can analyse your blood or cells for eight different diseases," said Furuberg and Mielnik. "These diseases are all identified by means of special biomarkers that are found in the blood sample. The 'labels' may be proteins that ought - or ought not - to be there, DNA fragments or enzymes." The EU project has used cells taken to diagnose cervical cancer as a case study, but according to SINTEF, the chip can now check a number of different diseases caused by bacteria or viruses, as well as various types of cancer. NorChip scientist Frank Karlsen says the chip could also enable patients to take samples themselves. He expects that such special sampling systems will be ready for testing within a few years.