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The company is developing an inexpensive microfluidic chip that can rapidly process a single drop of blood in 10 minutes to separate out proteins that act as health markers. The chip was developed by Hood and James Heath, a professor of chemistry at Caltech and another cofounder of Integrated Diagnostics. A key part of the chip is a second technology licensed by the company and developed by Heath: protein fragments called peptides that capture blood proteins of interest. These capture agents are more stable and cheaper to manufacture than the antibodies that are usually used for such tests.
The company has also licensed a large database of organ-specific proteins amassed by researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology. The advantage of the organ-specific approach, says Kearny, is that it will allow a doctor to determine not just what a disease is but where it's causing problems. If a breast cancer recurs and metastasizes to the lungs, for example, that organ will shed proteins in the blood that could help doctors detect the tumor location with a blood test.
Current versions of the diagnostic technology being tested in clinical trials at the University of California, Los Angeles, monitor 35 blood proteins in order to evaluate patients' responses to treatment for aggressive brain and skin cancers. The tests require only a single drop of blood and 5 to 10 minutes to complete.
Integrated Diagnostics has not yet announced which diseases its products will target. Possibilities include central-nervous-system disorders such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Alzheimer's disease, and brain cancer. Hood's lab has amassed a database of proteins in the blood that come from the brain and can be used to detect these diseases early and follow their progression.
Kearny says the company will spend the next three years developing its first products.
A new technique lets doctors screen drops of dried blood rather than vials of the liquid. The method could revolutionize infant pharmacology and drug testing for athletes.
Genomics pioneer Leroy Hood says a coming revolution in medicine will bring enormous new opportunities.
A comprehensive study of gene-expression changes could lead to new diagnostic tests.
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Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
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4 Comments
Picture of Health
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the "Health Index"...where this test will indicate, across a spectrum of protein analyzes', the overall health of an individual. The implications and opportunities here are very large. For example, your health insurance rates are based on a few simple parameters (no pre-existing conditions), sex, age, tobacco use, etc. I foresee using this technology to better quantify the health-risk an individual may be based on this technology, and adjusting the insurance premiums accordingly. With it, the individual who exercises regularly, eats well, etc, will receive a benefit in the form of lower cost health insurance.
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