LAB-ON-CHIP

Just as fly paper captures insects, a pair of nanotechnology-enabled devices are able to grab cancer cells in the blood that have broken off from a tumor. These cells, known as circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, can provide critical information for examining and diagnosing cancer metastasis.

IMEC has achieved a major milestone in the development of a lab-on-chip for the detection and therapy evaluation of breast cancer. This is the first time that a lab-on-chip system including many complex sample preparation steps and multiplexed detection was conceived and is being implemented.

IBM scientists have created a one-step point-of-care-diagnostic test, based on an innovative microfluidic silicon chip, that requires less sample volume, is significantly faster, portable, easy to use, and can test for many diseases, including one of world's leading causes of death, cardiovascular disease. The results are so quick and accurate that a small sample of a patient serum or blood, could be tested immediately following a heart attack, to enable the doctor to quickly take a course of action to help the patient survive.

Treated nanowires could serve as very sensitive toxin or pathogen detectors. But while nanowire sensors have been made in the lab, they have been difficult to mass-produce, mainly because there is no quick and easy way to place the tiny wires at precise locations on a surface.
Now researchers at Penn State University have come up with a way to guide single nanowires into place on a silicon chip using an electric field. Once the nanowires are in place, the researchers deposit electrodes on top to make arrays of sensing devices. This is a step toward affordable, sensitive handheld sensors that could quickly screen for hundreds of pathogens and toxic chemicals or catch the first signs of disease.