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An integrated microfluidic device enables rapid detection of protein biomarkers in patient samples.
Routine assessment of biomarkers promises to transform many areas of medicine, from clinical trials, which will benefit from biomarkerbased segmentation of patient populations, to the diagnosis and treatment of complex disease. To add real value, biomarkers must be measurable by clinicians and provide useful new information. In this issue, Fan et al. tackle the first of these challenges by developing a microfluidic integrated blood barcode chip that could serve as a point-of-care device for measuring multiple protein biomarkers in small samples of blood.