New-Tech Magazine - Europe | January Digital edition

This chip can find the needle in a haystack (and examine it)

Liesbet Lagae, Imec

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seconds, e.g., anyone anywhere can now take their smartphone, find out who first detected the HIV virus, and download the latest articles on the subject. This thanks to the enormous miniaturization of computer processors, image sensors, memory chips, wireless communication chips and high-resolution screens, all packed into an elegant and compact ‘box’, also known as your smartphone. What would happen if we could also apply this extreme miniaturization of systems also on tools for medical diagnosis? To make tools that would allow any medical doctor to do complicated tests on the fly, e.g. screening blood cells in a patient’s blood sample. Think of a cancer specialist, who would immediately be able to see if a patient has tumor cells roaming in his blood, a potential sign of metastatic cancer. Who would check after a patient’s chemotherapy

ust imagine you have to find a tumor cell in a milliliter of

if the number of tumor cells in the blood has diminished and if the treatment has to be continued or modified. A tool also that would make it possible to see if a patient’s blood is contaminated by specific bacteria, allowing to start a targeted treatment immediately. Such a high-throughput ‘cell sorter’ chip would not only lead to faster diagnosis. It could also allow a very fast way to isolate tumor cells in order to sequence their DNA and start a treatment based on the characteristics of the specific tumor type. Or used in stem cell therapy, it could be deployed to check if a colony does not contain any bad cells. In the process of culturing cells, something may go wrong, resulting in cells that may be dangerous for patients. So a compact, fast, and easy-to- use cell sorter chip would open up many possibilities for practitioners in

blood. One stray cell among many millions of healthy ones; one cell that you have to recognize and isolate so you can further investigate it. Sure, there are tools out there to help you. But now researchers are developing a chip-sized detective that may find the cells you’re looking for faster and cheaper than ever before. Moreover, this new diagnosis tool will be much more compact than existing tools, and much easier to use. The secret: a smart combination of silicon technology, lens-free microscopy, and ultrasmall steam bubbles. Scanning everything from tumor cells to stem cells The evolution in chip technology has given us smartphones that far outcompute the room-sized servers of a few decades ago. In a few

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