Re:Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Te...
by mk1202 on Thursday April 14, 2016 @04:08AM
(#11495012)
There are a couple of companies doing the same thing. They seem legit, and are founded by PhDs and university research scientists. If you look at their websites, you will find details about their technology, publications in scientific journals, professional conference talks & awards, etc. But they are not well known or hyped as much as Theranos. Do you really think the technology is not physically possible?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/uvic-blood-te...
Re:Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Te...
by forgotpwagain on Saturday April 23, 2016 @11:50PM
(#11558470)
Oops, missed this comment. If anyone is reading still reading this...
To be honest, I don't know. I think it is possible to get a lot of information out of a single drop of blood. But there are issues with sampling--blood from the capillaries in my finger is very different from blood coming back from my intestine.
Maybe more fundamentally: a lot of "interesting" things are specific proteins. These can be at extremely low concentration--on the order of nanomolar all the way down to femtomolar. It's very difficult to amplify such a signal -- DNA is easy to amplify but proteins are not. At such low levels, the wrong drop of blood may have a dramatically different meaning, due to stochastic effects.
Theranos was at the right time with a very intriguing idea, but one that was ultimately not a model for reality. They were able to get lots of capital at this time in preparation to develop a product that ultimately never materialized (and more fundamentally, may not be physically possible).