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A thumbnail sized micro chip marvel which, when plugged into a computer, can instantly run thousands of chemical reactions. This new technology will soon make the flasks, beakers and hot plates a thing of the past.
The new technology has been developed by University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers. This would accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer.
While traditionally only a few chemical reactions could be produced on a chip, the research team pioneered a way to bring about multiple reactions, thus offering a new method to quickly screen which drug molecules may work most effectively with a targeted protein enzyme.
The new micro chip device can run thousand cycles of complex processes, including controlled sampling and mixing of a library of reagents and sequential micro channel rinsing in just a few hours.
"The precious enzyme molecules required for a single reaction in a traditional lab now can be split into hundreds of duplicates for performing hundreds of reactions in parallel, thus revolutionizing the laboratory process, " said study co-author Hsian-Rong Tseng.
The director of the Pasarow Mass Spectrometry Lab at UCLA, Kym F. Faull helped the team with several challenges, including reducing the amount of chemicals needed for reactions on the chip, enhancing test sensitivity and speeding up reaction analysis.
"The system allows researchers to not only test compounds quicker but uses only tiny amounts of materials, which greatly reduces lab time and costs," said Faull, professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioural sciences at the Geffen School of Medicine.
Many areas for biological and medicinal study will open up with this new technology.
The study will be published in the Aug 21 edition of Lab on a Chip but is currently online.
