Via a simple blood sample, know within fifteen minutes whether you have cancer? The Leuven research centre Imec is working on a chip that should make that possible. Within three to five years, the device could be on the market, if the necessary funds are found.
It is an invention by scientist Liesbet Lagae of the Leuven Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (Imec) Imec and her team. They worked for four years on the chip, which can detect metastatic cancer cells in the blood. "With this, we are going to be able to save lives," she told Het Laatste Nieuws about the breakthrough.
The chip can photograph each cell individually based on a single blood sample. "Simply explained, the final test boils down to this: you have blood taken, the doctor places the blood sample in a device containing the chip, the chip photographs millions of blood cells at lightning speed and sends those photos to a computer," explains Liesbet Lagae. "Algorithms analyse all those photos and sort out the malignant cells there. Within 15 minutes, the doctor gets to see on his computer screen whether there are cancer cells and if so, to what extent. In other words, the doctor immediately sees whether there are metastases."
Less risk of errors
The chip uses nanotechnology and thus replaces the classic optical lenses of a microscope through which an oncologist looks at a picture with cancer cells today. The digital testing method would also give less risk of error. "Today, the most common technique to detect cancer is still an MRI scan. But: a tumour must already be a few centimetres in size for the scan to detect it. So such a scan only sees quite late whether there is cancer or not. While our chip can also detect very small tumours," Lagae says. "The faster you can detect cancer, the higher the chance of a cure. Currently, people sometimes have to wait weeks for a diagnosis. As many as 90 per cent of cancer deaths, statistics show, are due to late diagnosis or because there were metastases."
On the market within three years
The chip could be on the market in three to five years. "We have tested the chip on a very limited group of patients and know with certainty that the technology works. The money we got from the EU to develop the chip - two million euros - has run out after four years of research. To get the chip and the device ready for the market, as well as to do the legally required clinical trial on a large number of patients, we need another few tens of millions."
By: Kelly Bakker
Source: Het Laatste Nieuws
