Feeling sick? Diagnose with personal Handheld Diagnostic Laboratory

New invention could revolutionize how diseases are diagnosed
(PhysOrg.com) -- An award-winning invention by Stanford doctoral students Richard Gaster and Drew Hall may change who diagnoses diseases ranging from flu to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The invention, called the NanoLab, is a miniature, portable bioassay that can identify several disease proteins simultaneously without doctors, technicians or special lab equipment. With this technology, the inventors hope that individuals can literally take health care into their own hands.

“We built a technology that can be dispensed anywhere,’’ said Gaster, an M.D. and Ph.D. candidate in bioengineering. “It’s affordable, easy to use, and doesn’t require a laboratory to wash anything; it’s all self contained.”

Hall and Gaster entered a preliminary version of the NanoLab, originally coined “Lab-on-a-Stick,” in the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Biomedical Engineering Idea competition as a tool to use in airports to reduce the spread of pandemics. They took first place, and received a $10,000 prize and a large trophy to display in the Stanford Department of Bioengineering. Further innovations on the NanoLab won first prize in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) international Change the World Competition as a diagnostic tool for developing countries that are short on doctors and equipment. Gaster and Hall received certificates, another $10,000, and planets named after them at a ceremony in Los Angeles on June 25.

How it works
The NanoLab, which is the size of a small paperback book, consists of an electronic circuit board and a tiny well, just big enough to hold a few drops of blood from a pipette. The first step is to add a droplet of a sample such as blood, saliva or urine into the well. The tester then adds magnetic tags to label the viral proteins, making them detectable by nanosensors. Each tiny magnetic sensor is similar to the read head in a computer hard drive that detects ones and zeros, Gaster said. The NanoLab uses the same technology to sense biological data. The final ingredient is a protein solution containing disease antibodies.

The tester hits start and, 10 to 15 minutes later, tiny green, orange and red light bulbs illuminate, indicating which disease proteins were detected - and at what level.
The availability of antibodies, the proteins that our immune system uses to identify and fight viruses, is the only limit to the diagnostic tool.

Read more at: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/july22/nanolab-diagnostic-tool-072309.html