Instant Cancer Diagnosis-Biosensing-
If you've ever had blood work or a tissue biopsy taken, you know how excruciating the long wait for test results can be. Even routine tests for common diseases like strep throat can take several days to process, and cancer diagnoses can take weeks. Besides the anxiety that builds over time, a late diagnosis can mean critical delays in treatment and patient care.
Delayed diagnoses might soon be an annoyance of the past, thanks to work being done by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The team has created an electronic microplate that could lead to real-time diagnoses of many diseases.
The traditional, multi-welled microplate is a decades-old tool standard in most biomedical research and diagnostic laboratories. This device consists of what are basically tiny test tubes. Scientists use it to test samples' reactions to chemicals, antibodies and living organisms. Certain indicators, such as color changes, alert researchers to the presence of particular proteins and gene sequences.
The Georgia Tech researchers have revamped the traditional microplate with several modern updates, including disposable displays of electronic sensors connected to signal processing circuitry. The scientists envision that the device could someday lead to instant diagnoses and specific treatment approaches for individual patients' diseases.
"This technology could help facilitate a new era of personalized medicine," said John McDonald, chief research scientist at the Ovarian Cancer Institute in Atlanta, and a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Biology. "A device like this could quickly detect in individuals the gene mutations that are indicative of cancer and then determine what would be the optimal treatment. There are a lot of potential applications for this that cannot be done with current analytical and diagnostic technology."
A particularly advanced aspect of the new biosensing system is its ability to distinguish between healthy and diseased cells. Certain indicators, such as protein differences, DNA mutations and unusual ion levels, appear in cancerous cells. The researchers are working to find more of these markers, which will help devices make accurate diagnoses and could lead to fast and inexpensive disease detection.
"We have put together several novel pieces of nanoelectronics technology to create a method for doing things in a very different way than what we have been doing," said Muhannad Bakir, an associate professor at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "What we are creating is a new general-purpose sensing platform that takes advantage of the best of nanoelectronics and three-dimensional electronic system integration to modernize and add new applications to the old microplate application. This is a marriage of electronics and molecular biology."
The new sensor is fabricated with inexpensive, top-down microelectronics technology. Many of the parts are disposable, and the device can be used with reusable, conventional integrated circuits for information processing. The researchers envision that the device could be easily implemented in current diagnostic work.
"We want to make these devices simple to manufacture by taking advantage of all the advances made in microelectronics, while at the same time not significantly changing usability for the clinician or researcher," said Ramasamy Ravindran, a graduate research assistant at Georgia Tech's Nanotechnology Research Center and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
In addition to possible implementation with current technology, the new sensor could also be adapted to technologies not yet invented. Because the sensor uses silicon nanowires, which are tiny and can simultaneously detect large numbers of cells and biomaterials, it has the potential to diagnose a broad range of diseases.
"Our platform idea is really sensor-agnostic," said Ravindran. "It could be used with a lot of different sensors that people are developing. It would give us an opportunity to bring together a lot of different kinds of sensors in a single chip."
In testing, a device built on a 1-centimeter-by-1-centimeter area was successfully able to distinguish between healthy cells and ovarian cancer cells.
The research was funded by the National Nenotechnology Infrastructure Network, Georgia Tech's Integrative BioSystems Institute and the Semiconductor Research Corp.
Delayed diagnoses might soon be an annoyance of the past, thanks to work being done by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The team has created an electronic microplate that could lead to real-time diagnoses of many diseases.
The traditional, multi-welled microplate is a decades-old tool standard in most biomedical research and diagnostic laboratories. This device consists of what are basically tiny test tubes. Scientists use it to test samples' reactions to chemicals, antibodies and living organisms. Certain indicators, such as color changes, alert researchers to the presence of particular proteins and gene sequences.
The Georgia Tech researchers have revamped the traditional microplate with several modern updates, including disposable displays of electronic sensors connected to signal processing circuitry. The scientists envision that the device could someday lead to instant diagnoses and specific treatment approaches for individual patients' diseases.
"This technology could help facilitate a new era of personalized medicine," said John McDonald, chief research scientist at the Ovarian Cancer Institute in Atlanta, and a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Biology. "A device like this could quickly detect in individuals the gene mutations that are indicative of cancer and then determine what would be the optimal treatment. There are a lot of potential applications for this that cannot be done with current analytical and diagnostic technology."
A particularly advanced aspect of the new biosensing system is its ability to distinguish between healthy and diseased cells. Certain indicators, such as protein differences, DNA mutations and unusual ion levels, appear in cancerous cells. The researchers are working to find more of these markers, which will help devices make accurate diagnoses and could lead to fast and inexpensive disease detection.
"We have put together several novel pieces of nanoelectronics technology to create a method for doing things in a very different way than what we have been doing," said Muhannad Bakir, an associate professor at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "What we are creating is a new general-purpose sensing platform that takes advantage of the best of nanoelectronics and three-dimensional electronic system integration to modernize and add new applications to the old microplate application. This is a marriage of electronics and molecular biology."
The new sensor is fabricated with inexpensive, top-down microelectronics technology. Many of the parts are disposable, and the device can be used with reusable, conventional integrated circuits for information processing. The researchers envision that the device could be easily implemented in current diagnostic work.
"We want to make these devices simple to manufacture by taking advantage of all the advances made in microelectronics, while at the same time not significantly changing usability for the clinician or researcher," said Ramasamy Ravindran, a graduate research assistant at Georgia Tech's Nanotechnology Research Center and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
In addition to possible implementation with current technology, the new sensor could also be adapted to technologies not yet invented. Because the sensor uses silicon nanowires, which are tiny and can simultaneously detect large numbers of cells and biomaterials, it has the potential to diagnose a broad range of diseases.
"Our platform idea is really sensor-agnostic," said Ravindran. "It could be used with a lot of different sensors that people are developing. It would give us an opportunity to bring together a lot of different kinds of sensors in a single chip."
In testing, a device built on a 1-centimeter-by-1-centimeter area was successfully able to distinguish between healthy cells and ovarian cancer cells.
The research was funded by the National Nenotechnology Infrastructure Network, Georgia Tech's Integrative BioSystems Institute and the Semiconductor Research Corp.
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