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Blood testing chip could revolutionise medicine
BOFFINS AT THE California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a 'barcode chip' which is able to analyse concentrations of dozens of proteins in just a pinprick's worth of blood in under 10 minutes. The technology could potentially revolutionise diagnostic medical testing and offer patients early diagnosis on a host of illnesses ranging from cancer to heart disease.
Dubbed the Integrated Blood-Barcode Chip (IBBC), the a glass substrate chip is about the size of a microscope slide and is entirely covered with silicone rubber. Etched into the surface is a microfluidics circuit, or series of microscopic channels where the blood drop flows through, separating off the protein-rich blood plasma.
"With our barcode chip, we can go from pinprick to results in less than 10 minutes," said developer of the chip and professor of chemistry, James R. Heath. One chip alone can purportedly test blood from eight patients at the same time, measuring a plethora of proteins at once. "We are aiming to measure 100 proteins per fingerprick within a year or so. It's a pretty enabling technology," added Heath.
The system works as blood is pushed into IBBC's inlet, forcing the blood through the channels. Plasma is then skimmed off into narrow channels where it flows across the 'barcodes'. Each barcode is a series of lines about 20 micrometers wide and each patterned with a different antibody which captures specific proteins from the plasma as they pass over. Depending on the amount of protein captured, each individual barcode bar then emits a red fluorescent glow.
The barcode is then passed through a standard laboratory scanner also used for gene and protein expression studies to get rapid results. The Caltech researchers, however, think they could soon make the process even easier, “But it should be very easy to design something like a supermarket scanner to read the information," noted postdoctoral scholar Rong Fan who co-authored the paper.
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, with help from a US army grant. Currently the chip is being tested on patients suffering from brain tumours to measure the effects of their treatment. µ
L'Inq
NanoTechWire
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Are we talking single digit, double digit , or triple digit cost per test [ once the method is in volume use }

What the cost is will determine whether it is only useful for annual physicals[ high cost ] , or routine emergency room use [ medium cost] or third world countries [low cost ]
I agree with Dude1 up there.
I thinj that this is very interesting by same that other sistems to analyze the blood is indispensable the eye or a bacteriologist to analyzate de results because some times the machines bad throw results
Adding molecules derived from the human system of protien is very informative. It will show, providing the tech is there, that all protiens are not created equally. I think you are missing the point. Your argument of c02 is baseless and so is your serum reactivity. I think you should take a second look at this tech before you suggest that this is not worthy of further deployment. To me it sounds if that you have closed all doors on open thought. Perhaps one should try to understand that regardless of your schooling or background, until you make the breakthrough of protienchemical arrays, you are at a loss. Best of luck to them all.
Blood Does Stuff Chemically. SMA is: Serum Multi Anaylsis & number of items analyized is 100, up from 24 in 1960s' & thats up from 4 in early bllod testing. all use tubes of blood.

Adding protien isn't that informative, its protiens ability to react chemically as blood thats important. yet what blood is composed of is important.

measuring everything from CO2 content, O2 content, to how able serum is to maintain its self or its reactiveity to disease & strength of that reactiveity are all tested, these days. 
articles chips sounds like expensive extra test that will aid litttle excepting to create data base that can be compared to standard chemical testing. People have died over being told they have protien in blood. 
This could also aid kitchen help plungier blood from Bum whom once it flowed.
Canibals Everyone, I Say. Give Em Test & Put Em on Menu.
STeWie Drashek