Roche innovation ‘could enable lab tests to be carried in doctors’ offices’

Roche and ETH Zurich have expressed confidence about the potential of their new means of analysing the molecules in liquids.

The two organisations have worked together to develop a technique based on light diffraction in molecules and believe it could help to make medical diagnostics much quicker in the future.

Indeed, professor of bioelectrics at ETH Zurich Janos Voros pointed out that in the future, this technology could enable more laboratory tests to be performed in a doctor's office, rather than a specialist laboratory.

Furthermore, he suggested that further down the line, patients could be able to use this diagnostic technology at home.

The process sees a chip being covered with particular striped patterns, to which the molecules being examined will bind. 

However, they will not bind to the interstices between the stripes, which means if a laser light is directed across its surface, it is bent and focused onto a point below the chip, when a point of lights becomes visible. If samples without the molecules are placed on the chip, no light will be bent.

Mr Voros compared the principle to the workings of an orchestra, saying: "The molecules are the musicians, the stripe pattern the conductor. It ensures that all the musicians work in concert.”

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