This Lab In A Smartphone Detects Cancer Instantly

Scientists at Washington State University have developed a new low-cost, portable laboratory on a smartphone that can analyse several samples at once to catch a cancer biomarker with 99% accuracy, producing lab-quality results. At a time when patients and medical professionals expect faster results, researchers are trying to translate bio-detection technologies used in laboratories to the field and clinics, so patients can get instant diagnoses in a physician’s office, an ambulance or the emergency room. The researchers created an eight-channel smartphone spectrometer that can detect human interleukin-6 (IL-6), a known biomarker for lung, prostate, liver, beast and epithelial cancers. A spectrometer analyses the amount and type of chemicals in a sample by measuring the light spectrum. Although smartphone spectrometer exist, they only monitor or measure a single sample at a time, making them inefficient for real world applications. The new multichannel spectrometer can measure up to eight different samples at once using a common test called Elisa, or colorimetric test enzyme linked immunosorbent assay, that identifies antibodies and color change as disease markers. Although researchers only used the smartphone spectrometer with standard lab-controlled samples, their device has been 99% accurate. The researchers are now using the portable spectrometer in real world situations. With this eight channel spectrometer, researchers can put eight different samples to do the same test, or one sample in eight different wells to do eight different tests; this increases this device’s efficiency. The spectrometer would be especially useful in clinics and hospitals that have a large number of samples without onsite labs, or for doctors who practice abroad or in remote areas. Those can’t carry a whole lab with them. They need a portable and efficient device.