Brown Cancer Center innovation could lead to earlier diagnosis using a blood test

New technology developed at the University of Louisville’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center may lead to a future where doctors can diagnose complex diseases with a simple blood test.

The technology, called differential scanning calorimetry, or DSC, creates a visual map of how blood proteins behave when heated, providing clues to specific diseases. 

“It turns out that these maps look pretty much the same for people who are healthy,” said biophysicist Jonathan Chaires, Ph.D., who led the research team. “However, they look different for people with various diseases. In fact, our research so far has shown that diseases leave a distinctive fingerprint on the test result.” 

Chaires’ interdisciplinary team includes UofL researchers Nichola Garbett, Ph.D., James Miller, Ph.D., and A. Bennett Jensen, M.D. The team collected blood plasma from individuals with three diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme disease and lupus. Not only did the test outputs differ significantly from those of healthy individuals, but they showed marked differences from one another as well.

“We don’t know exactly why this happens,” Chaires said. “It may be that the disease processes produce low levels of different proteins that interact with blood plasma in a unique way.”

The research team thinks it’s possible the technology could be adopted for use in doctors’ offices and hospitals, providing physicians with an easy, fast way to test for hard-to-diagnose diseases and disorders.

“It may turn out that DSC is a valuable tool for early detection of diseases, like Lyme, that are much more serious if they go untreated for any length of time,” Chaires said.