`Sugar chip' found capable of quickly detecting cancer

Specialists confirmed that "sugar chips" that had been developed by Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) and his US research team to track protein glycosylation are also capable of detecting cancer within a second.

The sugar probes and sugar chips, developed by Wong and researchers at the Scripps Research Institute four years ago, can detect cancer within a second with 100 percent accuracy, as well as the HIV and H5N1 viruses, Academia Sinica's ENews reported on Tuesday.

The details about the innovative microchips -- which show great potential as a high-throughput diagnostic tool for the analysis of post-translational protein glycosylation in disease -- were published online in the journal Nature Protocols on Jan. 31. The findings were also scheduled to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States on Monday.

Wong, who is the world's most cited chemist specializing on enzymes and who assumed the post of Academia Sinica president last October, said that more than 80 percent of human proteins contained sugars called glycoproteins, and that the process of protein glycosylation was known to play a central role in mediating protein function in living organisms.

He said altered glycosylation was often associated with inflammation and cancer metastasis and added that the detailed correlation between glycosylation and biological or pathological status could provide information for diagnosis and treatment of diseases, particularly cancers.

Wong that by spreading a drop of human blood on the sugar chip, researchers could almost instantly determine the kind of cancer a patient is suffering from.