Dialysis is a compound word of dia and lysis– which means ‘through’ ‘splitting or loosening’. In chemistry, the term defines the process of separating particles within a liquid, based upon their ability to pass through a membrane. In medicine, we use the term when we remove impurities in the blood based upon their ability to pass through a membrance. Until now.

Because there’s a group from  down under, at the University of South Wales, that has a whole new idea for the dialysis process. (Dr. Majid Warkiani now heads his own project group at the Australian Centre for Nanomedicine.  However, this research started as part of a multicenter study when he was an MIT Postdoc and research fellow [at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre] under Drs. A.A.S. Bhagat and C.T. Lim.  The research program is based upon a biochip that both filters the blood and is employed to remove cancerous cells from the fluid. Hence, the developers termed it ‘dialysis for cancer’.

The device, the dynamics of the separation process, and the results with cancer cells have been covered by a variety of publications.Two such papers can be found here and here.

Now, here’s the really interesting news.  The original goal was just to develop a cheap, simple, and painless way to diagnose cancer, one that would replace the current process involvings a scan and biopsy to discern cancerous tumors.  This current process employs monoclonal antibodies to assay the circulating tumor cells (CTC).  Should the cancer growth be a solid (which covers about 99% of the cancers that affect humans), the cells are shed from the primary tumor site and traverse through the blood stream. Which should explain to everyone how these cancers are able to spread through the body.

As opposed to the monoclonal antibody based  conventional assays, this new system is pretty simple. Blood- comprised of the normal constituents, but may contain traveling cancer cells (termed the CTC)- passes through the biochip. The biochip is comprised of curved microchannels. The hydrodynamic forces (fluidic forces such as Dean drag forces and inertial lift) within the chip afford the separation among the different sized components; the cancerous cells travel up to the cancer cell outlet and the smaller cells are pushed down and out via a different exit on the chip. (This microfluidic separation or Dean Flow Fractionation means the larger cell particles move upwards and the smaller ones travel downwards. )

Oh, and there’s a big difference in costs between the two sorts of assays. The current (conventional) process runs about $ 700 a shot. The biochip process will run under $ 100 (maybe even as low as $ 50).  Of course, using the biochip to remove all the cancerous cells (instead of just determining what cells are present) will be more involved and cost more- but still vastly cheaper than the current surgical and radiological procedures.

Warkiani hopes to have this process available for use (at least in Australia) within a few years.  But, that may not be true, since his group’s attempts to obtain government funding have so far failed- not once, but six times. Warkiani feels its because this concept is so far afield. but …

By the way, Technology Review (an MIT publication) listed Dr. Warkiani as one of the top 10 innovators under 35 in Asia-Pacific. Unfortunately, the link has been removed by emtech.

And, another by the way.  Enjoy your New Year’s celebrations this evening.

Share this: