If immunotherapy has the cancer community riveted on the treatment side, liquid biopsies are equally exciting on the diagnostics end. And IBM is bringing its research heft to bear on the world of liquid biopsy with an intent to build a lab-on-a-chip technology that can separate particles at the nanoscale. The ability to do that can help physicians to detect cancer much earlier before symptoms manifest. In a paper published Aug. 1 in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from Big Blue highlighted dramatic improvements in a technology called nanoscale deterministic lateral displacement. The end result is a biochip that can sift 20 nanometer (a billionth of a meter) samples of DNA, RNA, exosomes and possibly viruses away from larger structures.
IBM enters the liquid biopsy sweepstakes
