Testing biological fluids such as blood and urine is essential for both diagnostics and routine checks. In remote, non-industrialized regions or for emergency on-the-spot diagnosis, current methods of laboratory analysis are far too complicated. George M. Whitesides and his team at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA) have now developed a prototype for a new class of inexpensive, highly practical rapid tests that can be used to carry out several biological tests simultaneously on a single drop. As they describe in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their tests are based on tiny pieces of paper onto which defined, millimeter-sized channels are printed.>>> Discuss This Story
