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fluorescentpuppy t1_jadbgfq wrote

This isn't remotely new or novel. Its just another microfluidic device in the sea of microfluidic device research for liquid biopsies. There's hundreds of these papers published everyday, and eventual marketable product and mainstream use is years of development away from an industrial viewpoint.

Source: worked on microfluidic devices through grad school for disease detection. Currently work for a liquid biopsy company for cancer diagnosis.

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YouPresumeTooMuch t1_jadq3ny wrote

Surely we still remember Theranos, it's been less than a year since sentencing

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olderaccount t1_jae6ltw wrote

The reason Theranos happened is because the concept is viable. They just decided to start faking results when their implementation wasn't living up to the promises.

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Cursory_Analysis t1_jaeb54q wrote

The concept of blood testing in general is plenty viable.

Theranos’ concept specifically as a bioengineering concept was actually not at all viable.

Every single person that looked at the product that they were peddling was saying “well, even in theory this isn’t possible to do”.

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Thanges88 t1_jaedazq wrote

What was Theranos' bioengineering concept?

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Doc_Lewis t1_jaeexyg wrote

Detecting very scarce amounts of material from improbably small amounts of sample

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Thanges88 t1_jaefain wrote

Ah yep, I just didn't classify that in my mind as a bioengineering concept.

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VdomanFla t1_jaeebt1 wrote

As long as she keeps getting pregnant, she can delay going to prison.

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ron_leflore t1_jaej9i8 wrote

Haha, this sentence is in every micro fluidic paper:

> Existing technologies are time-consuming, expensive and rely on skilled operators, limiting their application in clinical settings.

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ksknksk t1_jaf468k wrote

I mean, yeah?

It’s the motivation for the research, so other papers doing similar research on the same overall topic (mfd) would have essentially the same motivation (or at least partly if there are other driving factors)?

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Hannibal_Lecture t1_jaecwt8 wrote

There are a number of circulating tumour DNA liquid biopsies available today, the most publicised is probably from Grail Therapeutics, but there are a few others such as the Cancer Research UK backed Inivata.

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kingpubcrisps t1_jadzzqr wrote

https://icellate.se/en/news/detail/the-early-detection-of-cancer-study-icellate1-published-in-the-journal-of-integrative-oncology

It is available now.

edit

>CellMate® is a modular diagnostic platform for cancer detection and biomarker analysis. Our next generation liquid biopsy isolates circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood across cancer diagnoses and tumor stages. CTCs are further quantified and categorized by protein expression and genomic variants.

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warrensussex t1_jaebh63 wrote

That just sounds like another proof of concept paper. I don't see anything in your link about a product currently on the market or even when it might be.

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CheekyGruffFaddler t1_jaen9h1 wrote

I figured this would have made it into Nature or Science if it were as groundbreaking as the title suggested, but apparently it’s just a microfluidic pH meter?

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rocket_randall t1_jaeo68z wrote

A boutique genetics company I used to work for was researching and fundraising off the same idea. The way the director of bioinformatics at that job described it to me as akin to tapping into the sewer line for a small city and from a random sample being able to ascertain whether or not anyone in the city ate natto the previous evening, and even then it's another matter entirely to identify in which home the natto was eaten. He was highly skeptical of it ever delivering the claimed results without some major advancement in technology, and every one of these press releases seems more or less the same as what I was reading internally almost a decade ago. Then again I am just a software guy and not someone with training or expertise in this field.

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hlx-atom t1_jaeqdm1 wrote

Sure, but there are methods to amplify signal that the analogy is missing. The amplification can be imprecise which leads to false positives and negatives.

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koyo4 t1_jaeuqe2 wrote

Yup not new at all. But an increasingly growing field.

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harryoe t1_jaexyqe wrote

There are already some microfluidic devices approved and for sale today. It's unfortunate how bad of a reputation the field has since there have been many fraudulent products which use the concept (notably theranos)

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Tower21 t1_jaewskm wrote

Years like 5 to 10 or 20 to 30?

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ben7337 t1_jaexebz wrote

What are the hurdles to a mainstream/mass producible product to enable this sort of technology? The article here says they have a device that can be used in clinical settings which they are parenting and planning to commercialize, though I suppose plenty of battery tech that never comes to fruition also likely goes through similar steps. However as a layperson it's not really clear what if anything is stopping something like this. Would you mind providing some insight into this?

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globaloffender t1_jaf175a wrote

Do you mind sharing what company? Illumina? I’m sorta in the field

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Lambylambowski t1_jaee83w wrote

Thank the GODS OF PROFIT that this is years away.. the medical industry as a whole is already suffering financially.

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