Scientists have developed a new method for testing blood via sound waves, which could lead to a compact, portable testing kit that's simpler and more straightforward than the equipment in use today.
The test targets exosomes - tiny packets released by cells to carry messages around the body, including information about disease. Intercept those packets, and you can learn a lot about the body's health.
Existing test methods like ultracentrifuges or chemical tags also risk damaging the blood samples along the way, something which won't happen with the new technique, according to the international team of researchers who developed it.
"Acoustic sound waves are much gentler," says one of the team, Ming Dao from MIT. "These particles are experiencing the forces for only a second or less as they're being separated, which is a big advantage."
The new process is based on work done by the same team in 2014. Blood is passed through a very small channel and exposed to two tilted acoustic transducers, and as the sound waves from these transducers meet, they form pressure points.
These points can be used to divert cells into different channels depending on their size, and here the researchers used two of the devices: one to sort out the cells and platelets from the blood, and one to isolate the exosomes with higher frequency sounds.
"These exosomes often contain specific molecules that are a signature of certain abnormalities," says Dao. "If you isolate them from blood, you can do biological analysis and see what they reveal."
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