Lab-on-a-Chip Samples Saliva, Might Diagnose a Heart Attack

Dr. John T. McDevitt and colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin are developing a nano-bio-chip designed to analyze the composition of a patient’s saliva to diagnose a range of acute and chronic conditions, including possibly an ongoing myocardial infarction:

“Many heart attack victims, especially women, experience nonspecific symptoms and secure medical help too late after permanent damage to the cardiac tissue has occurred,” says John T. McDevitt, principal investigator and designer of the nano-bio-chip. “Our tests promise to dramatically improve the accuracy and speed of cardiac diagnosis.”
McDevitt, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, collaborated with scientists and clinicians at the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio…
McDevitt and his co-workers and collaborators took advantage of the recent identification of a number of blood serum proteins that are significant contributors to, and thus indicators of, cardiac disease.
Leveraging microelectronics components and microfabrication developed initially for the electronic industry, the research group developed a series of compact nano-bio-chip sensor devices that are biochemically-programmed to detect sets of these proteins in saliva. They looked at 32 proteins currently used for diagnosis of blood serum in cardiac clinical practice.
The new diagnostic test works like this: A patient spits into a tube and the saliva is then transferred to a credit card-sized lab card that holds the nano-bio-chip. The loaded card is inserted like an ATM card into an analyzer that manipulates the sample and analyses the patient’s cardiac status on the spot.
The test can reveal that a patient is currently having a heart attack and that they should receive treatment quickly. It can also tell a patient that they are at high risk of having a future heart attack.
The researchers have currently measured 80 clinical patients and their data shows that the saliva tests were nearly equivalent to more standard tests on blood serum using FDA-approved instruments.
“What’s novel here is our ability to measure all such proteins in one setting and to use a noninvasive saliva sample, where low protein levels make such tests difficult even with large and expensive lab instruments,” McDevitt says.
The new technology is still in the clinical testing phase, but it is a strong candidate for further commercial development through the Austin, Texas company LabNow, Inc., a start-up venture that licensed the lab-on-a-chip technologies from The University of Texas at Austin. LabNow’s first lab-on-a-chip product, now in development, targets HIV immune function testing and can be used in resource poor settings like Africa.

Press release: Saliva Can Help Diagnose Heart Attack, Study Shows…
More: McDevitt Research Labs – Lab-on-a-Chip Sensors…
Flashback: Sampling Saliva for Breast Cancer at The Dentist’s
(hat tip: Technology Review)