1 drop of blood & 60 minutes: Breakthrough device heralds future of cancer detection

Published time: October 18, 2014 13:33

Early cancer detection can save millions of lives but current diagnostic methods remain costly and invasive. However, a new startup is developing a device which could detect dozens of cancers with a single blood test.

The Miriam test platform was recently presented at the TEDGlobal 2014 conference in Rio de Janeiro by Jorge Soto, a cancer technologist. He promised that it would make cancer detection at the molecular level “easier, cheaper, smarter and more accessible than ever before.”

Named “one of the most thrilling demos in TED history” by conference curator Chris Anderson, Miriam is a compact, $500, 3D-printed device that, nevertheless, can detect several kinds of cancer – pancreatic, lung, breast and hepatic – and it is only the beginning, according to its makers, who have decided to make its design open-source.

RT