The Press-Dispatch
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A-8 Local Wednesday, November 1, 2017 The Press-Dispatch 303 Breckinridge Rd, Monroe City 812-743-2382 Fax: 812-743-2169 | Email: perryshvac@gmail.com HEATING & AIR-CONDITIONING Craig Perry Vance Perry Chase Perry Perry ' s LLC Serving the area since 1950. Perry ' s Complete Line of: Air Conditioning, Gas Furnaces, Heat Pumps, Whole-Home Air Cleaners, Humidifiers, Water Heaters and Water Conditioners Whether you need a tune-up or an emergency repair call, we'll take the worry out of winter. When you see our truck, you know that peace of mind just pulled in the driveway. Call us today! We're Confident You'll Stay Cozy 32nd Annual The Press-Dispatch Join the new 812-354-8500 | www.pressdispatch.net *By enrolling in the Birthday Club, you agree to have your name, town and birth- day, or the person's name and town and birthday of whom you are enrolling, printed in e Press-Dispatch on the week in which the birthday occurs. Joining is easy! Send your: Full name, address, city, state, zip code, phone number and birthdate to birthdayclub@pressdispatch.net.* One winner is drawn at the end of each month. Each week, a list of birthdays will be published in the paper! You could win a FREE PRIZE from area businesses and a three-month subscription to e Press-Dispatch. Purdue researchers seeking to repurpose Blu-ray technology to diagnose cancer receive grants By J. Paul Robinson Purdue University re- searchers pursuing a way to repurpose high-definition Blu-ray technology, popular for watching videos and lis- tening to music, to diagnose early-stage cancers and mon- itor their treatments have re- ceived nearly $200,000 in state and federal grants. Cytomics Analytical LLC, led by J. Paul Robinson, the SVM Professor of Cytomics in Purdue's College of Veteri- nary Medicine and professor in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, has received a National In- stitutes of Health Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Grant, also known as America's Seed Fund, for $147,364. The company also has received a $50,000 grant from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. "We were finally able to convince someone at NIH that this is worthwhile," Rob- inson said. "It seems improb- able that you could do this, but we have conducted exten- sive research and are confi- dent it will work and it will be revolutionary." The funding will be used to develop a low-cost diagno- sis platform called MY-Blu that will use high-resolution measuring devices in Blu- ray to find nanoparticles re- leased in blood in early stag- es of cancer, as well as from many syndromes, Robinson said. Though it is technolog- ically challenging to accu- rately detect particles small- er than 100 nanometers, Blu- ray technology has shown promise in detecting parti- cles that are 10 nanometers to 20 nanometers. "Cancer cells break down when they are attacked by the immune system and re- lease these microparticles. But we can't see them unless we use very expensive equip- ment, like an electron micro- scope, and it takes a lot of time," he said. "If those mic- roparticles are important, we ought to be able to find and identify them very quickly. We believe our modifications to Blu-ray technology will al- low us to achieve this." Robinson said most tech- nology can't be used to try to detect microparticles be- cause the particles are so small they don't reflect light. But he believes Blu-ray de- vices, which are optical disc data storage units designed to replace DVDs and already in many people's homes around the world, can be re- purposed to detect these mi- croparticles. The grants specifically will be used to adapt Blu-ray devices to detect fluorescent molecules attached to the nanoparticles. "Once we do that, we can show proof of principle that this works," Robinson said. The challenge is repurpos- ing the Blu-ray technology to do something it wasn't in- tended to do. Robinson said what gives him confidence it can be done is that his chief technology officer, Masano- bu Yamamoto, an adjunct professor in Basic Medical Sciences in Purdue's College of Veterinary Medicine, who is a former lead engineer for the Sony Corp. and played a key role in developing Blu- This is a specially designed disc on the disc read movement from a standard Blu-ray readers. This disc has a special layer on the top, creating a network of microgrooves below where the liquid sample is measured. Photo provided J. Paul Robinson is the SVM Professor of Cytom- ics in Purdue's College of Veterinary Medicine and a professor in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomed- ical Engineering. Purdue Research Foundation photo ray technology. "He is Mr. Blu-ray, be- cause he's one of maybe a half-dozen people in the en- tire world who fully under- stand how this technology actually works. He's recog- nized that we can take this technology and complete- ly repurpose it," Robinson said. "We have adopted some unique features of the tech- nology that have never been used for the purposes we in- tend and designed electron- ics to reveal key signals." Among the challenges Robinson and Yamamoto had to overcome was developing a sensor that could accurate- ly measure signals from a particle that was over 10 bil- lionths of a meter in size. "You discover that you have to develop components that you thought would have been out there," Robinson said. The cost of finding these nanoparticles using an ap- proach Yamamoto calls Op- tical Phase Detection will be low because Blu-ray devices are already mass produced, Robinson said. Cytomics Analytical has applied for patents to use MY-Blu technology to search for pre-cancer, and sever- al other important diseas- es. The company is based in West Lafayette and has re- ceived help in its work from the Purdue Research Foun- dation.