On Sept. 27, 2009, University of Toronto researchers announced that they had used nanomaterials to develop a microchip sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of a patient’s cancer so that the disease can be detected earlier for more effective treatment.

Their groundbreaking work was reported in Nature Nanotechnology.

The researchers’ new device can easily sense the signature biomarkers that indicate the presence of cancer at the cellular level, even though these biomolecules – genes that indicate aggressive or benign forms of the disease and differentiate subtypes of the cancer – are generally present only at low levels in biological samples. Analysis can be completed in 30 minutes, a vast improvement over the existing diagnostic procedures that generally take days.

The speed and accuracy provided by their device is welcome news to cancer researchers.

The team’s microchip platform has been tested on prostate cancer, as described in a paper published in ACS Nano, and head and neck cancer models. It could potentially be used to diagnose and assess other cancers, as well as infectious diseases such as HIV, MRSA and H1N1 flu.