Scientists working to create ’wellness chip’ to detect cancers, diseases.

By Elaine O’Connor

Postmedia News

VANCOUVER — What if screening one drop of blood on a device the size of a postage stamp could diagnose a dozen cancers, neurological diseases and heart disease before you suffer a single symptom?

An American biologist whose company, SomaLogic, is working on a “wellness chip,” hopes to make that diagnostic dream a reality within a decade.

Larry Gold is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who is presenting his research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver this weekend in a session on predictive medicine.

He’s working with biomarker proteins that are present in blood. To date, he’s helped decode a thousand of the estimated 4,000 proteins in our bloodstream.

His company has discovered how to bond proprietary molecules to these proteins in a way that makes them easy to track at tiny concentrations, revealing the protein-code presence of multiple diseases more accurately and earlier than with traditional diagnostics, and long before symptoms appear.

In one recent study, Gold compared the protein profiles of 1,000 people with confirmed cases of non-small-cell lung cancer to those of 1,000 people in a heavy-smoker risk group who did not have any diagnoses or symptoms of cancer. They were able to detect the presence of early-stage cancer in 60 of the test-group participants.

The company hopes to have these select protein tests available in about a year, while the comprehensive tests will take up to 10 years.

“I don’t use the word predictive medicine for what we are doing,” said Gold, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology. “It’s really about precision medicine. It’s about early diagnostics, not of diseases you might get, but of diseases that have already started in your body. That, to me, is where science needs to go.”

Gold’s research is one of the fascinating advances being presented at the prestigious conference, attended by 8,000 scientists from 60 countries.

It’s the first time in 30 years America’s largest general scientific conference has been held in Canada.

Vancouver Province

eoconnor@theprovince.com

Twitter.com/elainereporting

PN 2/17/12 16:29:42