Dr. Simon Spivack and Dr. Weiguo Han from the New York State Department of Health are planning to present research showing the feasibility of testing DNA within condensed breath.
From the statement by the American Association for Cancer Research:

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to detect DNA methylation in the breath of smokers and lung cancer patients, suggesting that, in theory, it may be possible to use this technique to identify people who have undiagnosed lung cancer or are at high risk of developing the disease.
Investigators at the Wadsworth Center, the public health laboratory of the New York State Department of Health, have been able to develop an assay that simultaneously detects the presence of methylation in six tumor suppressor genes – a process by which a gene is chemically silenced. The assay examines the promoter region of a gene, where certain cytosine nucleotide bases may be methylated, preventing the gene from being expressed.
The seven participants tested so far breathe for ten minutes into a commercially available handheld device, which cools the air, forming a condensed vapor, to which the methylation assay is applied. Investigators found it could detect the presence of the methylated form in all six tumor suppressor genes. For RASSF1A, the test was negative in non-smokers, and positive in both current and ex-smokers. For DAPK, methylation was more variable, given smoking status. The four other tested genes (p16, MGMT, PAX5B,CDH1) known to be methylated in various stages of lung cancer development, were minimally or not methylated, in this pilot study of predominantly cancer-free smokers.
“Dr. Weiguo Han and I have shown that this approach is technically feasible, and if further research demonstrates the assay can measure DNA in such a way that it diagnoses or predicts lung cancer, this could be important for non-invasive lung cancer testing,” said the study’s lead author, Simon D. Spivack, M.D., M.P.H., a research physician at the Wadsworth Center, and a specialist in lung diseases. “But we are a long way from that point.” Han, a post-doctoral fellow in Spivacks’ laboratory and the study’s first author, will be presenting the findings.
Spivack said his study was only the third to date that proved DNA could be tested in condensed breath – German researchers reported the first such result in 2003, followed by an Italian group in 2005 – and the first to find methylation-silenced tumor suppressor genes in the breath of patients at risk or harboring lung cancer.

More . . .

University of Utah investigators, under Dr. Bruce Gale, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, invented a novel method to move chemicals, blood or other bio samples through diagnostic chips.
Here’s how the university explains its technology:

While a lab-on-a-chip would have hundreds to thousands of micropumps–sets of tiny fluid and air channels and larger chambers in which samples were tested–Eddings and Gale demonstrated their invention by building an array of 10 of the tiny pumps.
They molded tube-like “microchannels” — each the width of a human hair — into the top and bottom layers of a three-layered piece of silicone polymer material about the size of a deck of playing cards. The polymer is named polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS.
“It’s made out of bathroom caulk,” Gale quips. “It is very similar to the clear silicones you’d use to seal your bathtub.”
The card deck-sized array has three layers of rubbery PDMS:

A top fluid channel layer, with wells into which blood or other samples are placed, and microchannels through which they can flow toward small chambers.

A crucial middle layer, a thin, permeable membrane of PDMS. Gas can pass through the caulk-like PDMS, while liquid cannot.

A bottom control channel layer, with inlets and tiny channels through which air pressure or a vacuum is applied.

The air pressure or vacuum, respectively, push or pull air through channels in the bottom layer, transmitting pressure or suction through the middle-layer membrane to push or draw fluids through channels in the upper layer.
While an outside air pump or vacuum is needed to run the device, Gale says the membrane is, in effect, the pump because a pump creates a pressure difference, which is what the membrane does to move fluids.
Because gas, not fluid, flows through the middle layer, liquid in the upper-layer microchannels can flow into and fill dead-end channels or chambers without trapping air. That allows the pump to carry samples like blood or fluids with protein or DNA through the microchannels to dead-end chambers that contain chemicals needed for a test.
The outside device to run the lab-on-a-chip — including air pressure or a vacuum to run the micropumps — “would be as big your wallet, and the chip would be like a credit card that goes in your wallet,” Gale says.
Each micropump can produce a flow of up to 200 nanoliters of fluid per minute. A nanoliter is one-billionth of a liter, and a liter is less than 1.1 quarts.
“If you had a drop on the end of a pin, that would be five times as much fluid as this pump would move in a minute,” Gale says. “In some respects, we are bragging that’s a large flow” for such a tiny pump. Yet the flow could be slowed considerably if the pump was used to deliver drugs, he adds.

Link…
Flashback: Micropump Speeds Fluid Through “Lab On a Chip”