Bio-reader brings major recognition to Sandstrom

Perry Sandstrom had something of an “out-of-body” experience in November. The 36-year-old found himself in a tuxedo, in a room filled with presidents, CEOs and VIPs.

An electrical engineer for the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics at UW–Madison, Sandstrom found himself on a stage, framed by lights and large projection screens, accepting a $100,000 prize called the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It was a far cry from the quiet basement electronics shop where he built the DNA-chip reader that garnered him the award.

As one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, Wallace Coulter also created a basement laboratory where, in the late 1940s, he spent many hours exploring ways to link electronics with cell biology. In 1948, he invented the Coulter Principle, which provided a methodology for counting, measuring and evaluating microscopic particles suspended in fluid. The Coulter Principle led to one of medicine’s most common and informative diagnostic tests, the complete blood count.

The Coulter prize, administered by the Georgia Institute of Technology, is awarded to individuals with potential to achieve the highest level of engineering innovation, resulting in technological advances with health-care applications.

Sandstrom’s invention, the SynchroGene Reader, represents a simpler, faster, more cost-effective way of analyzing hybridization microarrays, otherwise known as DNA chips or biochips. DNA chips are facilitating breakthrough discoveries in medicine and the biosciences with their ability to look for specific gene sequences from the billions represented in a genetic code.

“In the near future, microarray manufacturers should be able to provide clinically relevant probes for all 35,000 human genes on a single DNA chip,” says Sandstrom. “If it’s true that most diseases are accompanied by changes in gene expression levels, then ultimately doctors may be able to identify a person’s disease and best course of treatment by looking at their gene expression profile.

“That’s just one potential application of DNA chips,” he adds. “The implications of DNA-chip technology are enormous. My hope is that this chip reader invention may enable the eventual migration of DNA-chip technology from a research tool to a clinical diagnostic.”

Thousands of researchers in laboratories around the world are using ready-made DNA chips as a primary tool for genomics research. One of the main efforts is to understand the function and relationships between genes that were sequenced by the Human Genome Project.

Invention has always been a part of Sandstrom’s life. He says his father, a skilled machinist, exposed him to the practical aspects of design and aesthetics. He has never gone long without some sort of project. As an electrical engineering undergraduate, he worked under Materials Science and Engineering Professor Max Lagally, building the electronics for a scanning tunneling microscope.

“That was a great opportunity for me,” he says. “As an undergraduate, it really got me started in instrumentation design.”

Sandstrom is named on several patents stemming from work with his father and as an engineer for the College of Engineering. His work is part of projects aboard the International Space Station.

It was through social contacts with graduate students in genetics that Sandstrom first became interested in biotechnology in the late 1980s.

“When I learned that much of the equipment in biochemistry had basically remained unchanged since the ’70s, I started talking with friends about how to apply newer electronics technology to various types of experimental setups,” he says. “Ultimately, that led to my interest in biotechnology instrumentation.”

Sandstrom’s $100,000 prize will help fund the development of the SynchroGene Reader through his company, Able Signal LLC. The prize has given him reason to consider all kinds of purchases he might not otherwise be able to make.

“But,” he says, “what I really want is a nice oscilloscope.”