Innovative Technology Developed
The researchers from the University of Toronto created a new means of analyzing very small blood and tissue from the breast samples in order to assess the risks of a female developing breast cancer in a faster way than any of the other existent methods. This method is as efficient as it is small in techniques used.
The leading authors of this research are Doctor Noha Mousa and Mais Jebrail. Robert Casper from the Obstetrics and Gynecology department within the Faculty of Medicine, and Mr. Aaron Wheeler represent the main scientists of the investigation. This study was financed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canadian Cancer Society. It will be available to the general public in the first edition of the Science Translational Medicine journal.
Doctor Noha Mousa from the Canadian Institute of Health Research, who is also a partner of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute and the University of Toronto in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is one of the researchers of this study. As he explains the women who suffer from breast malign tumors show an enhanced level of estrogen hormones and their metabolites which represent the end products of the metabolized female hormone compared to sane females. This is the reason for which the estrogen is thought to enhance the risk of suffering from breast cancer. Nonetheless, the level of this hormone in females` breasts is not constantly monitored because the traditional methods need big tissue samples that are obtained through painful biopsies.
In order to manage to design a system that is efficient in measuring the level of breast estrogen, the scientists group from the University of Toronto utilized innovative technology entitled digital microfluidics. This technique is different from the customary ones because instead of transporting electrons on very small wires, the fluid drops are driven electrically over the area of a tiny chip. This is the reason for which this technique is entitled “lab-on-a-chip”, since it uses an amalgam of various laboratory operations and facilities comprised by small devices.
The director of the Wheeler Microfludics lab within the Department of Chemistry, Mr. Aaron Wheeler stated that the group of investigators used this lab-on-a-chip” method firstly to examine the hormones contained by very small trial samples. By doing so, the researchers manage to create new ways to transport the droplets coming from various types of reagents, which are the substances that are consumed when a chemical reaction takes place, with the view to pull out hormones and clean them. All of these processes were located on a device that is so small that it could be compared to the size of one`s palm.
As Wheeler stated, the group of investigators hope that the innovative methods they have created would in the near future lead to a simple and constant monitoring of medical samples for examining the hormones they comprise. The “lab-on-a-chip” technology developed by the team of researchers would prove to be of great use in many activities comprising the monitoring of women for the risk of suffering from breast cancer, with the drawn attention to the areas of high-risk, and also analyzing the efficiency to the anti-estrogen breast cancer treatments like aromatase inhibitors, for example. Moreover, the innovative technology would also aid in screening the levels of feminine hormones in the treatments against infertility and also for detecting the doping in sports people.
