Speedy diagnosis

Researchers at Cardiff University's School of Medicine and the Gray Cancer Institute Oxford have developed a novel system that has the potential to speed-up disease diagnosis and drug screening.

And now, Cancer Research Technology Limited and the Technology Partnership plan to develop the so-called CyMap system further after signing a technology transfer agreement with Cardiff University.

CyMap is one of the inventions emerging from the Optical Biochips Consortium led by the university’s professor of cancer biology, Prof Paul Smith.

Smith was in overall charge of the £2.3m biochip project carried out by the consortium and funded by Research Councils UK.

CyMap works on the principle that when illuminated using a light-emitting diode, cells or pathogens in a sample create light diffraction and interference patterns that can be recorded by a charge-coupled device and then analysed using computer algorithms.

That analysis can then provide the user with details on the number of cells or pathogens, and also enables the location, movement and division of cells to be monitored over time.