The Speculist

Last August I wrote briefly about a small company by the name of Correlogic. The Wheeling Intelligencer brought me up to date with an article published last week. Correlogic has developed a method to glean information from the data generated from a mass spectrometer.

A mass spectrometer is a machine that can ionize the molecules in a sample of blood serum and then propel those molecules down a tube about a meter in length. The machine will then measure the number of ions that hit the end of the tube during any given moment.

This process will effectively separate the molecules by mass. It is then possible, said [Ben Hitt of Correlogic] to determine whether there is, say, a relatively large amount of a molecule with a molecular weight of 500 versus one with a molecular weight of 510. And in proteomics, the "presumption is that the mass spectra represents proteins in the serum"…

A single blood sample can return as many as 180,000 data points. The trick is to mine that data for information.

"It's almost revolutionary," said Hitt, "Given time to develop the test, we ought to be able to have some one go see their physician, take a very small amount of blood, send it to the lab, get a mass spectrum of that blood" and then determine if the patient has a number of possible cancers.

He said it could be possible to use a single sample to test for lung cancer, colon cancer and liver cancer, as well as ovarian and breast cancer in women and prostate and testicular cancer in men..

If a simple blood test was developed that could detect multiple cancers, then the test could become routine. Early detection would allow early treatment and greatly improved survival rates.

Ultimately this technology could be placed into an implanted medical device. This would be a simpler system than what Phil and I have thought about recently (here and here). Instead of a system that would need to send nanobots out into the body to correct damage, this system could simply take blood samples and test them for cancer and other problems (high LDL cholesterol, heart damage, intoxication, blood-sugar, hormone imbalances, etc.). It could then inform you (or your doctor) via cell phone or PDA if there is a problem.

Perhaps this could even be an added function to medical devices like the Cardioverter Defibrillator.