Researchers in the College of Engineering and Architecture have received a $750,000 grant from the Washington State Life Sciences Discovery Fund to develop a simple and quick blood test to easily identify heart attack victims before they show symptoms.
Led by Neil Ivory, professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, this team of researchers hopes to develop a test that would quickly identify biomarkers that indicate that a patient is at-risk of suffering a heart attack. The team includes Prashanta Dutta, associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and Wenji Dong, assistant professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.
Several biomarkers have been identified in recent years that are specific for heart disease. The test WSU researchers are working to develop would detect and quantify minuscule amounts of several of these biomarkers in less than a minute.
Ivory, Dutta and Dong hope to identify these proteins in the blood and separate and concentrate them, using technology developed at WSU that pulls the proteins through tiny micro-channels. Reducing the size of the separation process allows the researchers to do separations much faster than traditional methods. Then, they want to use an optical detection technique called Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) to target and quantify biomolecules. The test, they hope, could eventually be administered in a doctor’s office or by EMT’s, or perhaps even by at-risk patients themselves.
“We hope this research will open up new possibilities for health management by making it possible for medical technicians and, hopefully one day, ‘at-risk’ patients, to spot-check their health by quickly ‘fingerprinting’ the ultra-trace cardiac biomarkers in their blood in much the same way that diabetics now have tools for monitoring their blood-sugar levels,’’ said Ivory.
The researchers eventually plan to work towards commercialization of the product.
The Life Sciences Discovery Fund grant is one of six awarded throughout the state for 2007. The fund is supported by money awarded to the state through settlements with the tobacco industry.
