Improving health assessments with a single cell
Tuesday, May 24, 2011 - 07:01
in Health & Medicine
(Medical Xpress) -- There's a wealth of health information hiding in the human immune system. Accessing it, however, can be very challenging, as the many and complex roles that the immune system plays can mask the critical information that is relevant to addressing specific health issues. Now, research led by scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has shown that a new generation of microchips developed by the team can quickly and inexpensively assess immune function by examining biomarkersproteins that can reflect the response of the immune system to diseasefrom single cells.