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	ISB AND CALTECH RESEARCHERS INVENT A REVOLUTIONARY BLOOD TEST FOR DETECTING DISEASE      ISB President and Co-founder Lee Hood, MD, PhD, has for several years predicted the development of a chip which, using just a fingerprick of blood, will measure protein biomarkers to reveal the presence of diseases such as cancer and heart disease long before any symptoms develop. This chip, said Hood, would be a milestone in the development of P4 Medicine (predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory).      Such a chip, recently developed by Hood and Jim Heath, PhD, of the California Institute of Technology, was described recently in Nature Biotechnology.      "It's the beginning of a revolution in healthcare that will allow us to focus on proactively maintaining wellness rather than		reactively treating illness," said Hood. Proteins in the blood can be used to diagnose diseases such as cancer at their earliest stages, long before they are visible in CAT scanners, MRIs or other such devices. Physicians haven't used proteins as a diagnostic tool, however, because the cost has ranged from $50 to $500 per protein and current tests are time-consuming, requiring multiple visits to the doctor's office.      The chip invented by Hood and Heath can test for 35 proteins within10 minutes from a single drop of blood at a cost ranging from $1 to as low as a nickel per protein. Thus, a physician's practice will be able to conduct the tests inexpensively and on the spot. The chip, which is based on microfluidic, florescent and bar-coding technologies, is currently in clinical trials involving cancer patients and healthy individuals.		The Integrated Blood Barcode Chip
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