February 14, 2018 | SAN FRANCISCO—The winner of the second annual Diagnostics World Early Innovator Awards program was announced today at the 2018 Molecular Medicine Tri Conference in San Francisco. Thomas Carey from the University of California, Berkeley was chosen out of three finalists for his project tackling late-stage cancer diagnosis.
The Diagnostics World Early Innovator Awards program recognizes innovation and creativity in effectively recognizing and solving a real-world clinical, scientific, or organizational problem through the application of a unique solution.
“It’s always a joy to reward work that asks great questions and seeks creative solutions,” said Phillips Kuhl, President of the Cambridge Healthtech Institute. “We hope that the Early Innovator Awards program will continue to fuel the competitive spirit of our young scientists and inspire them to be leaders in our field, changing the shape of medicine as we know it.”
For his award-winning entry, Carey and his colleagues are developing a microfluidic-based platform to detect the presence of biomarkers present in virtually every fluid. The platform does not require optical components, which would allow any instrumentation associated with the platform to be low-cost. The platform also screens for lung cancer by detecting tumor derived exosomes in saliva and uses signal-processing methods borrowed from cellular communications, allowing for both minimal sample preparation and enabling the platform to be used by untrained users.
This solution is currently a theoretical proposal.