Diagnose Food Allergy with One Drop of Blood

Protein chip, which can diagnose tens of food allergy, is developed. Foodbiotech, a biotechnology venture firm (Representative Jee Wha-Jeong), announced Monday that it has developed protein chip that can diagnose food allergy with one drop of blood for the first time in the world, and applied for patent.

Foodbiotech developed protein chip by using a principle that the existence of respective food allergic antibody can be detected according to the degree of blood reaction to protein, which is attached to a slide as the form of mole after being extracted from a particular food.

The size of the chip is 3.3 centimeter by wide and 2.2 centimeter by long. Allergy test is possible for 82 items including egg, milk, bean, pork, and chicken. Foodbiotech plans to develop a chip which can test 200 items of allergy by next month.

Kim Tae-Eun, director of the research development of Foodbiotech, said that ``the existing test takes long time because it tests each food separately. However, this new chip can test tens of items at the same time in 8 hours. Especially, since the necessary amount of blood is small, it is possible to test new-born babies.``

Foodbiotech provides a food allergy test service for 60 basic items, such as grain, fruit, vegetable, meat, fish, and spices, at 300,000 won. The existing test costs a couple of million won.

Allergy related diseases are rapidly increasing due to the environment pollution and the instant food. 25 percent of infants and 10 percent of adults suffer the atopic dermatitis due to the allergy, and 8 percent of the people in nation are estimated to be food allergy related patients.

Lee Ho-Gab gdt@donga.com