New technology uses tears to detect diseases like cancer and diabetes – Revista Galileu

Researchers at Wenzhou Medical University in China developed a technology who collects and purifies tears humans, allowing identification of biomarkers of diseases, such as cancer And the diabetic. The system is part of a study published July 20 in the journal ACS Nano.

The technology, called iTEARS, purifies and separates tiny “bubbles” found in tears, called exosomes, by identifying genes From these vesicles that transport lipids, nucleic acids and even Proteins. The system then identifies the structures, which act as markers of the disease and improve diagnostic accuracy.

This method is less invasive and does not depend on the evaluation of the patient’s symptoms, which may go unnoticed in the early stages of certain conditions. diseases. Other techniques to isolate exosomes require longer and more complex processing and large sample sizes.

The scientists wondered if the nano-membrane system, which they created to isolate exosomes from urine and plasmaIt can also help them get the vesicles to cry. So they modified their original idea and succeeded.

“Tears can be collected without surgery and autologously harvested from patients for exogenous particle analysis,” they wrote in the paper. The team was able to separate vesicles in just 5 minutes, with the tears filtered onto the porous nanomembranes with an oscillating pressure flow.

A total of 400 different types of Proteins They are found in exosomes. These molecules can be tagged with fluorescent probes and then transferred for further analysis on other instruments. The nucleic acids present in the vesicles were also extracted and studied.

In doing so, the researchers distinguished many patients by comparing samples of them with samples from healthy people. Among the diseases identified are several types of dry eye diseases, Diabetic retinopathy, as well as transverse malformations and several neurodegenerative disorders. As he concluded experts “Exosomes are a promising source for early detection of disease.”