|
Clark’s biochip screens chemicals for safety |
|
December 18, 2007 UC Berkeley Professor of Chemical Engineering and member of the Bioengineering Graduate Group Douglas Clark, with colleagues from Berkeley, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Solidus Biosciences, Inc. has developed a new biochip to provide, among other uses, rapid analysis necessary to insure that the chemicals in cosmetics are non-toxic to humans. Within the next 5 to 10 years, assuming the cost of sequencing all of a person’s genes becomes generally affordable, people will be able to use the chip to prescreen all drugs before they’re administered to determine safe and effective doses.
The biochip itself is a suspension of more than a thousand human cell cultures in a three-dimensional gel on a standard microscope slide. Each cell culture is capable of assessing the toxicity of a different chemical. According to the researchers cultures of skin cells in this so-called DataChip could be used to rapidly screen new chemicals for skin toxicity or irritability. Solidus Biosciences is working to commercialize the chips.
By adding other types of cells, such as heart or lung cells, and combining the DataChip with another biochip, the MetaChip, which the researchers created several years ago, cosmetics or chemical companies could also test whether chemicals are toxic to other organs, not just skin.
The team views the chip combination as an efficient, more accurate way to test drug compounds for toxicity earlier in the discovery process, possibly saving a considerable amount of money before it has been invested in a drug candidate.
Jonathon Dordick and Douglas Clark were joined in their research by Moo-Yeal Lee and Michael G. Hogg of Solidus Biosciences; R. Anand Kumar of UC Berkeley; and Sumitra M. Sukumaran of Rensselaer.
Read the full story at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter . |
