Showa University and My Tech have developed Proteo, a silver nanoscale chip that they claim detects most types of cancer from a drop of blood in three minutes. It functions by attracting a faintly luminous substance found in cancer patients, beginning at a very early stage.
They have only studied 20 patients, but diagnosed whether a tumor is benign or malignant with total accuracy.
The researchers are accumulating data from various types of cancers, and hope to make the blood test available next year. They believe that the preliminary data suggests that the device could be more effective than existing blood tests.
Showa’s Hiroaki Ito and MyTech’s Yuki Hasegawa said that the accuracy derives from the chip attracting certain nucleosomes, which are prevalent in all types of cancer. The nucleosome emits light, the intensity of which increases as more of the substance accumulates. This is seen under a fluorescent microscope, providing the ability to identify visually if the blood is from an individual with cancer.
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