Taking advantage of the company’s experience with silicon technology, IBM scientists have developed a lab-on-a-chip device that can separate biological particles at the nanoscale. This, says the team, could enable physicians to detect diseases such as cancer before symptoms appear.
The team has already separated bioparticles of 20nm in diameter, which access to particles such as DNA, viruses and exosomes. Once separated, these particles could be analysed by physicians to reveal signs of disease before physical symptoms are seen. Until now, says the company, the smallest bioparticle that could be separated by size with on-chip technologies was about 1µm in diameter.
IBM is collaborating with the Icahn School of Medicine to develop the technology and plans to test it on prostate cancer.
Professor Dr Carlos Cordon-Cardo, chairman of the Mount Sinai Health System Department of Pathology, noted: “By bringing together Mount Sinai’s domain expertise in cancer and pathology with IBM’s systems biology experience and its latest nanoscale separation technology, the hope is to look for specific, sensitive biomarkers in exosomes that represent a new frontier to offering clues that might hold the answer to whether a person has cancer or how to treat it.”
“The ability to sort and enrich biomarkers at the nanoscale in chip-based technologies opens the door to understanding diseases such as cancer, as well as viruses like the flu or Zika,” said Gustavo Stolovitzky, IBM Research’s program director of translational systems biology and nanobiotechnology. “Our lab-on-a-chip device could offer a simple, noninvasive and affordable option to potentially detect and monitor a disease, even at its earliest stages.”
Using nanoscale deterministic lateral displacement – nano-DLD – IBM scientists Dr Joshua Smith and Dr Benjamin Wunsch led development of a technology that allows a liquid sample to be passed, in continuous flow, through a silicon chip containing an asymmetric pillar array. IBM has already scaled the chip size to 2 x 2cm, while continuing development to increase the device density to improve functionality and throughput.
According to IBM, nano-DLD uses a set of pillars to deflect larger particles while allowing smaller particles to flow through the gaps in the pillar array. The team says nano-DLD arrays can also split a mixture of different particle sizes into streams, bringing the prospect of continuous flow testing.
Author
Graham Pitcher
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk