1 hr. <\/p>\n
John Roach <\/p>\n
Stephen Quake, a prolific inventor whose application of physics to biology has led to breakthroughs in drug discovery, genome analysis and personalized medicine, has won the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, a prestigious award for outstanding innovators. <\/p>\n
A big part of physics is trying to figure out how to measure things, Quake, who is a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Stanford University, told me. And so I get interested in a biological problem [and] figure out a way to measure it. <\/p>\n
Among his many inventions is the biological equivalent of the integrated circuit, so-called microfluidic large scale integration. <\/p>\n
I got interested in trying to automate biology the way the integrated circuit automated computation, he said. And so you need a chip that, instead of having wires and transistors on it, has pipes and valves and pumps and things. <\/p>\n
It is little miniaturized plumbing. Its got up to tens of thousands of mechanical valves on a chip, and all kinds of plumbers nightmares. <\/p>\n
Quake co-founded Fluidigm to commercialize the technology in 1999. The company generated $10.8 million in sales in the first quarter of 2012, Reuters noted. <\/p>\n
Applications of the technology are myriad, including Quakes own work on single-cell genomics. Others have used it to help determine the structure of proteins, including for the Ebola virus and H5N1 influenza virus, for example. <\/p>\n
Another Quake innovation is a non-invasive pre-natal test for Down syndrome which is based on analysis of blood taken from a mothers arm, which includes fetal DNA. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
View post: 1 hr. John Roach Stephen Quake, a prolific inventor whose application of physics to biology has led to breakthroughs in drug discovery, genome analysis and personalized medicine, has won the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, a prestigious award for outstanding innovators. Continue reading
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