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Changing Sick Care To Health Care With A Simple Blood Test

This article is more than 8 years old.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the use of genomics and proteomics to develop personalized clinical treatments and improve the quality of our lives.  At a high level, genomics is essentially the study of a person’s genome and the use of its genes.  Proteomics is the study of the full set of proteins encoded by a genome.  Interesting … but, why should you care?

Genomics testing gives us the ability to detect DNA associated with certain disease types, but that testing doesn’t show if a particular disease is active in the body.  Thus, these tests can tell us about what might happen to us and potentially what our risks are, but they can’t tell us what is happening to us at a given time.

That’s where proteins come into play.  Proteins are released once a disease is active in the body and can be detected as soon as it’s live via the toxins released.  Proteomics goes an extra step in telling us how the genes are being expressed through the measurement of proteins and effectively report if the patient is currently inflicted with a disease as opposed to the chance of contracting the disease based on their genetic makeup.

The human genome encodes thousands of secreted proteins, each of which is an actor in the delicate biochemical balance of diagnostics.  Even a slight change in any one of these proteins can mean the difference between sickness and health.  Today there are only about 170 diagnostic tests for proteins and there are as many as a million different proteins in the blood.  Some of these proteins are quite difficult to detect.

However, there are a number of recent advances in protein detection that brings the quest for personalized medicine closer to reality.  For more information about the next generation of protein testing, we reached out to Kevin Hrusovsky, CEO of Quanterix.  Quanterix’s technology platform, Simoa, uses new single molecule detection techniques to access previously undetectable proteins.

Hrusovsky believes that “Simoa will revolutionize personalized healthcare and has the potential to convert sick care into healthcare by detecting and quantifying proteins in the blood at 1,000 to 10,000 times more sensitivity than existing approaches.  This also allows researchers to measure far smaller samples than ever before as the sensitivity provides the flexibility to dilute small samples and still measure the marker of interest.”  A video of the Simoa process is shown below:

Using single molecule detection technology with improved sensitivity, proteins in the blood can be uncovered and detected much earlier to treat and, ultimately, halt disease progression.  Instead of using blood tests for sick patients, it should be possible to test healthy patients and use blood tests as preventative measures to improve treatment paths much earlier.  Such capabilities could also help pharmaceutical companies and the development of companion diagnostics.

Hrusovsky offered the following example, “Today, when you’re taken to the emergency room for a cardiac infarction, the first thing that’s measured is your troponin levels to determine whether or not you’ve had a heart attack.  When you have a heart attack, the protein goes up so high that today’s technology can easily diagnose it after the fact, however, single molecule detection via a blood test can diagnose troponin in healthy patients long before the cardiac infarction, changing the way in which medicine is practiced.”

With this new sensitivity and ability to detect troponin in the blood far before things like heart attacks occur, you’re getting to the issues that are environmentally triggered long before the event actually happens.

“This is how we can transform and evolve sick care,” explained Hrusovsky.  “Meaning that these tests in the past have generally only been able to test the patient once they’re sick.  To truly reinvent healthcare, we need to do all of this testing before the incident, making the condition much more treatable.”

While there will always be disputes over environmentally triggered occurrences of disease versus genetic make-up, with this paradigm shift from sick care to healthcare, the way in which we live will change.  Preventative measures when addressing healthcare will be a widespread adoption with the introduction of earlier and more accurate diagnostic testing.  Patients will have a better idea about what they have to be aware of with their own personal health and, in turn, hopefully change their lifestyle for the better.

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