A SINGLE blood test could diagnose any disease a person might have via a unique protein 鈥渇ingerprint鈥�, claims start-up company ProteinLogic of Cambridge, UK.
At the moment, doctors order specific tests or scans to confirm a diagnosis. But biochemist Adrian Woolfson, one of the founders of the company, has a different vision. He thinks a single test that compares levels in the blood of around 300 different proteins could diagnose any disease.
In preliminary studies, Woolfson and colleague Nick Hales say they have been able to spot diseases such as appendicitis and leukaemia. But thousands of people would have to be tested to create a database of protein fingerprints for all the diseases. 鈥淚t鈥檚 almost the scale of the genome project,鈥� Woolfson says.
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