Harvard student Neil Davey, A.B. ’18, has developed a technique that pushes the possibility of non-invasive cancer diagnosis one step closer to reality.
His technique involves injecting a tiny amount of blood into a microfluidic device to encapsulate single cells from the blood stream in individual microfluidic drops. Once the cells have been encapsulated, Davey uses a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a common technique in molecular biology, to target and amplify fragments of cancer DNA within the drops.
“The advantage of this technology is that it is ultra-sensitive, so I can detect as few as one cancer cell from a billion normal cells in the blood,” he said. “The process is also very specific. One can uniquely detect a wide range of cancers using this DNA amplification technology.”
The technique could hold huge implications in the world of cancer diagnostics, which currently relies primarily on invasive and dangerous tumor biopsies. Microfluidics is much easier and cheaper than traditional methods, since the test uses only tiny amounts of reagents and takes 30 to 60 minutes to complete. The technology is currently about 90 percent accurate, but that accuracy can be improved if the test is refined to target more genes of the cancer cell, Davey said.
For Davey, who recently declared an economics concentration with a secondary field in statistics, the opportunity to use his knowledge to potentially improve the lives of cancer patients has been extremely rewarding.
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