Professor Christofer Toumazou, at the Imperial College in London, has invented a‘lab on a chip’ technology that can examine a person’s DNA within about 30 minutes and diagnose certain diseases and also discover if a person has a predisposition.
This new technology termed as a major breakthrough in preventive medicine by diagnosing infectious or inherited diseases in the early stages before they’ve been identified normally. This could allow treating patients and prescribing appropriate drugs immediately.
The technology deals with pH changes as DNA strands combine together, allowing genetic sequences to be read rapidly and directly at the point of need.
Silicon transistors used in lab-on-a-chip device help identify DNA and RNA, amplifying and detecting DNA and other biomolecules using pH measurement. This is less expensive and faster than other DNA and RNA analysis methods and equipment currently available in the market.
This new microchip, which has won the European Inventor Award 2014 in the category of research, will be available in Europe within three years and later in the United States. Prototypes of the microchip should be available in early 2016.