• Question: Cancer is one of those things that seems to have no solutions. How are you planning to develop an efficient enough blood test, and what would you do if the results came back positive?

    Asked by rubberducky to Sarah on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      My plan is to create dyes that are extremely sensitive to cancer chemicals in the patients blood. The dyes I am making give out fluorescence and fluorescence it an extremely powerful and accurate technique and there are machines available that can detect the tiniest increases in fluorescence.

      I’m using the dyes in pairs using a special technique called “FRET”. When the dye-complex binds to the cancer chemicals in the blood sample, the dyes separate, but just before they do, one of the dyes transfers its energy to the other dye and suddenly it fluoresces!

      If the test came back positive, the next challenge would be to figure out what type of cancer the patient has. This should be easy to figure out from the symptoms the patient has and they could get an MRI scan to check. The next stage would then be treatment. Treatment is much more successful if the cancer is in the early stages, which is why this test is so important.

Comments