Taiwan, Canada develop new hepatitis C screening method

Under the sponsorship of Taiwan's National Science Council, the Industrial Technology Research Institute and National Research Council (NRC) Canada, an international research team recently combined technologies developed in Canada and Taiwan to create a screening device that can be carried in one hand.

Led by Kao Fu-jen, a professor at National Yang-Ming University, and Albert Stolow and John Pezacki from NRC Canada, the team jointly developed the high-sensitivity imaging system by re-engineering a DVD reading and writing head so that it can detect optical signals including fluorescence and tiny vibrations from a technique called coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering.

The device creates images from cell samples that allow researchers to determine whether the hepatitis C virus is present. The development is expected to help sharply increase the efficiency of the diagnosis of chronic hepatitis C, Kao said in a press release.

The size of the device allows for point-of-care testing, which is diagnostic testing at or near the site of patient care.

According to Kao, the hepatitis C virus is spread through contact with infected blood, and about 170 million worldwide are infected with it. Currently, there is no vaccine against the virus.

How the hepatitis C virus harms the livers of long-term carriers is still unknown, but the risk of people with hepatitis C contracting liver cancer is 10 times higher than for ordinary people, the press release said.

The goal of the collaboration project between Taiwan and Canada is to develop real-time, unobtrusive and efficient biomedical detection methods and instruments for widespread application for hepatitis C and other infectious diseases, it said.

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