Future of Engineering
Monday, March 24, 2008
Very Small Microchip To Aid in Future Disease Diagnosis
A tiny, highly sensitive device that could give medics a head start in testing for a range of diseases is being developed by engineers at the University of Leeds. The Leeds device is more than ten times smaller than existing models while offering the accuracy and sensitivity required for clinical diagnostics - and the researchers believe the technology could allow them to reduce the size much further still.
The inventors used an array of electrodes as the base of their device rather than the conventional glass slide. The individual electrodes are created using the same technology used to produce modern microchips, so are very small and very closely spaced.
Conventional techniques use antibodies as receptors on their sensors to bind to the target proteins – but these are not very stable when attached to a sensor and tend to lose their specificity. So the developers created an artificial robust antibody called a ‘peptide aptamer’ that is so stable that it can be attached to the electrodes and still bind to a specific target protein.
Full report here
Related blogposts
Microchip Could Aid In Future Disease Diagnosis
The inventors used an array of electrodes as the base of their device rather than the conventional glass slide. The individual electrodes are created using the same technology used to produce modern microchips, so are very small and very closely spaced.
Conventional techniques use antibodies as receptors on their sensors to bind to the target proteins – but these are not very stable when attached to a sensor and tend to lose their specificity. So the developers created an artificial robust antibody called a ‘peptide aptamer’ that is so stable that it can be attached to the electrodes and still bind to a specific target protein.
Full report here
Related blogposts
Microchip Could Aid In Future Disease Diagnosis
Labels: Bio-engineering, Electronics-Communications-Engineering
PermaLink - Very Small Microchip To Aid in Future Disease Diagnosis posted by Ecacofonix : 7:49 AM
