Four faculty members from the BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences have assisted in the development of a groundbreaking new silicon microchip that reliably detects viruses.
Dennis Tolley, a professor in the Department of Statistics, and Adam Wooley, Milton Lee, and David Belnap all of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, each lent their expertise to the chip’s research and development and are listed as co-authors on the paper.
The chip provides an inexpensive means for physicians and lab technicians to test their patients’ samples for various proteins or viruses. Current testing techniques are fairly inaccurate unless a large concentration of a virus is present. However, the chip developed by BYU researchers screens for particles according to size, allowing it to accumulate many particles that would otherwise be missed by other tests.
The hope among researchers is that, with this new advancement, use of “lab on a chip” technology will become more widespread. Rather than waiting for lab test results to return, doctors will be able to detect and treat viruses early, before any real damage occurs.
Mark N. Hamblin, a Ph.D. candidate in the BYU Fulton College of Engineering and Technology, is the paper’s lead author. The project has been supervised by Aaron Hawkins, a BYU professor of electrical and computer engineering, and also includes research input from professors Jie Xuan and Daniel Maynes. The paper was recently published in Lab on a Chip, the leading scientific journal devoted to the development of chip-based biological tests.