Nano-mechanical sensor detects cances, HIV, and other diseases
12 Jun 2015
Researchers have developed a highly sensitive nanomechanical sensor capable of detecting cancerous tumours and viral disease markers for HIV, hepatitis and herpes.
The ultra-compact nano-mechanical sensor developed by researchers from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) can analyse the chemical composition of substances and detect biological objects.
The sensor has the ability to detect viral disease markers, that appear when the immune system responded to incurable or hard-to-cure diseases, including HIV, hepatitis, herpes, and many others.
The sensor would also allow doctors to identify tumour markers, whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumours.
The highly sensitive sensor would allow diagnosis of diseases long before they could be detected by any other method, paving the way for a new-generation of diagnostics, according to the researchers.
According to calculations by the two researchers from the MIPT Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics, Dmitry Fedyanin and Yury Stebunov, the new sensor would combine high sensitivity with a comparative ease of production and miniature dimensions, allowing its use in portable devices, such as smartphones, wearable electronics, etc.
The researchers said, on chip, several millimeters in size would be able to accommodate several thousand such sensors, configured to detect different particles or molecules.
The sensor will also enable doctors to identify tumour markers, whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumours.
The ultra sensitive sensor would allow diagnosing diseases long before they can be detected by any other method, which will pave the way for a new-generation of diagnostics, researchers said.
Calculations by researchers Dmitry Fedyanin and Yury Stebunov, showed that the new sensor will combine high sensitivity with a comparative ease of production and miniature dimensions, allowing it to be used in all portable devices, such as smartphones, wearable electronics, etc.
The device, described in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, was an optical or more precisely, optomechanical chip.
"We've been following the progress made in the development of micro- and nanomechanical biosensors for quite a while now and can say that no one has been able to introduce a simple and scalable technology for parallel monitoring that would be ready to use outside a laboratory," the researchers said.
"So our goal was not only to achieve the high sensitivity of the sensor and make it compact, but also make it scalable and compatible with standard microelectronics technologies," researchers said
