More related nanomedicine news:
Early disease warnings forecast
Blood to be read for signs of illness
Equipment to test blood for signs of heart disease, cancer and, perhaps, Alzheimer's disease will be marketed by a Northbrook firm by the end of 2005.
Using techniques made possible by nanotechnology, which allow researchers to detect key markers for disease at very low concentrations, Nanosphere Inc. is developing an automated process to read genetic materials much like a bar-code reader scans prices.
"Automation is very important because it enables you to do more experiments in a given window of time," said William Moffitt, the firm's chief executive.
The technology is designed to find proteins that could indicate disease. The proteins may be the cause of the illness or a byproduct of the disease. Either way, detection gives researchers a way to diagnose illness at an early stage.
It also lets them determine if treatments are helping to fight a disease.
One early application for Nanosphere's technology may be to determine if a person has heart disease before a heart attack occurs, Moffitt said.
"Researchers know that the protein troponin is a marker for heart attacks," he said. "At very low levels, it can indicate when someone has heart disease, and monitoring it can help in assessing how quickly the disease is progressing."
Recent research by Chad Mirkin, a chemistry professor at Northwestern University, suggests the technology also may help doctors diagnose Alzheimer's disease in its earliest stage.
"These things have been flying below the radar because we just cannot detect them," he said.
The researchers reported they can detect a protein marker called ADDL in the cerebral spinal fluid of patients, suggesting an early phase of Alzheimer's. Previously, ADDL was found in brain tissue of Alzheimer's sufferers, and many researchers believe it plays a role in the dementia associated with Alzheimer's.
Researchers at Merck & Co. are working to develop antibodies that would disable ADDL as a strategy to reverse Alzheimer's.
Mirkin said the ability to detect ADDL at very low levels will help speed the research and eventually may help doctors diagnose and treat the disease.
William Klein of Northwestern's department of neurobiology and physiology said that the next task is to determine if ADDL can be detected circulating in the blood of Alzheimer's patients.
"If that's the case, you might one day get a test for ADDL annually when you have a physical," Klein said.
Moffitt said his company's strategy is to market its technology first to researchers. As researchers discover more and more protein markers that are tied to disease, the equipment can be used in hospital labs or doctors' offices to help diagnose diseases.
By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 2, 2005 |
