ORLANDO, Fla. — Imagine walking into a doctor's office, getting a blood test and finding out minutes later if you have cancer. A University of Central Florida professor working on that ground-breaking research says it appears to work.
In a lab inside one of the many research buildings at UCF, Dr. Treen Huo is trying to find cancer gold, a screening test with near 100 percent accuracy.
"A faster, better way but also, more importantly, more accurate information," Huo told Channel 9's Jamie Holmes.
Huo has created a test during which she injects a drop of blood into a liquid containing gold nanoparticles, which are no bigger than a speck of dust.
"So you come in, give a blood test," said Holmes. "As she takes a sample of your blood, then she puts in the gold nanoparticle solution. The antibodies in your blood congeal to the nanoparticles and tell you if you have cancer."
If those cancer biomarkers stick to the gold nanoparticles, there can be up to a 95 percent chance you have prostate cancer, which makes the test roughly 75 percent better than the current prostate cancer test.
And unlike current tests, which take days, the new test gives doctors and patients their results in minutes.
"This is a screening test. The test will be done in about 30 minutes," Huo said.
The test is so promising that Florida Hospital and the VA are providing Huo with hundreds of blood samples for research.
And prostate cancer is just the beginning. Huo imagines being able to detect all forms of cancer, courtesy of the microscopic specks of gold.
"We think this test could be used for a broad spectrum of cancer types," she said.
It will take a year of research before the doctor can submit her findings for FDA approval.
And although she can't predict what doctors or insurance companies will eventually charge, the test itself costs her less than $1 to administer.
WFTV
