Question: how far have u got in developing this dye to recognise cancer biomakers?

Sarah Thomas answered on 15 Jun 2011:

Well the dye is made of 3 parts. It is a sugar that has 2 different dyes attached to it. When the 3 parts are intact there is no fluorescence. They kind of cancel each other out. When it comes into contact with the cancer biomarkers, the sugar breaks in two and then you see fluorescence.

I’m pretty far through it. I’ve made the sugar and one of the dyes, and now i’m working on figuring out how to attach the two dyes to different parts of the sugar. I’ve got it working, but it’s not as efficient as I want it to be so I’m working on improving that just now.

If everything goes to plan, I could be using real blood samples and testing for cancer in 2 years. It would take a few years of testing before it would be available to everyone, so I still have a long way to go.

Oh I just realised it may sound strange that i’m attaching the dyes onto a sugar. I discovered last year that it’s the sugar that recognises the biomarkers and it does this thing where is splits in two. That’s when I came up with the idea for the blood test.

If you have anymore questions, get in touch! 😀