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Israeli Chemists invent diagnostic tool to rival biotechnology

Posted on August 28, 2007 • By Deena Levenstein
Category: Science |

Infigo Diagnostics, an incubator company with funding from Targetech Innovation Center, is revolutionizing rapid diagnostics. They have created what they claim to be an easier to use, more economic solution for counting specific chemicals in a body than the often currently used genetically engineered antibodies.

Right now biotechnology rules this part of medicine. Scientists figured out how to use genetically engineered cells (like bacteria) to create antibodies for almost any antigen.

Explanation: It is the lock and key theory. Antigens are the bad guys (the keys in the theory) attacking our bodies. Our immune systems create a specific antibody (lock) for any antigen that has ever attacked thereby disabling its ability to succeed in attacking us in the future.

So, using biotechnology, scientists create their antibody (lock) of choice. They also mark it so that afterwards they are able to measure how much of the antigen (key) exists in the body being tested.

This is an extremely precise science and a big money-maker. But now chemistry is making a comeback using…

Molecular Integrated Polymer (MIP)

I know you have every idea of where I’m going with this.

MIP pretty much means that you take plastic, wrap it around the molecule of choice and, voila, you have the exact negative shape, in plastic, of the molecule. This is actually not new but only lately has it been taken a step further in order to make it useful in the world of diagnostics.

Infigo Diagnostics has developed the MIP technology so that specific substances can be easily counted.

Explanation: Dr. Raphael Levi, the founder of Infigo Diagnostics, found the following (using the lock-key analogy): Take a key tagged with color. Attach it to the plastic mold (lock). Place it in the sample of liquid (for example, a blood sample) with the molecule (key without the color tagging) you want to count. Because of the added color, the tagged molecule does not stick as strongly to the mold as the original molecule would. So when the mold comes in contact with the “real” molecule, the colored one detaches and the “real” one attaches. Then, you count how much of the color-tagged molecules are in the sample. Because they switched places in the MIP with the “real” molecule, we know that the number of colored molecules in the sample is the number of originals that were in the sample. And once you know the amount of the molecule in the sample, you can calculate the concentration in the body.

Got it? (Thank God I studied sciences in university.)

So what makes it better than the existing diagnostic methodologies? Ido Margalit, CEO of the company says a few things. MIPs, as opposed to antibodies, can detect not only big molecules (like proteins) but small ones too. Because it is synthetic, it is quick and cheap. It will also broaden the market which, according to Margalit, is currently controlled by a relatively small number of companies.

And an example of the importance of this new technology?

Vitamin B12

Right now diagnosing a vitamin B12 deficiency is, well, deficient. Currently the amount of B12 in the blood is measured. Problem is that only some of the B12 is actually active. So the total amount is measured and then, “The doctor makes an educated guess based on the approximate quantity of B-12 in the body and the patient’s symptoms,” says Margalit.

Because the MIPs can work with very small molecules, Infigo Technologies has developed an MIP that measures MMA, a tiny molecule in the blood that is a biological marker of active B12. In other words, measure the amount of MMA in the blood and you know how much active B12 is there.

But Infigo believes that in the end their technology will be helpful in many settings like testing pollutants in water, or checking fruit for pesticides at home.

Gali Weinreb and Hanan Lifshitz, “Plastic antibody”, Globes online, August 13, 2007.

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