EON

The University of Toronto has developed a new tool to help diagnose prostate cancer in just a matter of minutes. The tool is able to test for prostate cancer without painful biopsies. This will encourage more people to get tested for cancer, and save more lives.

The device measures the cancer causing antigens in a urine or blood sample and can have results in about 30 minutes or less. This makes the waiting time for patients, much more bearable verses waiting weeks to hear back from your doctor. The device is still in the beginning stages, and if it is approved for use, it will still take a couple of years before it is seen in doctors offices.

The device can also be used to test for head and neck cancers or some infectious diseases like MRSA, HIV, and H1N1.

This device has the potential to save money in expensive medical testing and lab work. It will be able to tell the type of cancer and what stage the cancer is in, by reading markers in a urine or blood sample.

The challenge for scientists around the world, will be identifying specific markers for the 1000 or so different known cancers. Only 9 have had the specific markers identified thus far.

The device will eventually have an assortment of chips, each chip will be used to look for different illnesses. Eventually the chips will have the ability to be programmed to each doctors specific concentration levels of disease biomarkers that they are looking for.