SUPERSENSITIVE NANO DEVICE CAN DETECT EXTREMELY EARLY CANCERS
Extremely early
detection of cancers and other diseases is on the horizon with a supersensitive
nanodevice being developed at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) in
collaboration with The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN)
in Greensboro, NC.
A nanoprobe that's 125
microns in diameter with gold nanodots on a 4-micron fiber core is at the heart
of the machine.
Each gold nanodot
looks like a disc and is 160 nanometers in diameter, says Dr. Lin. That's too
small for the human eye to see -- in fact, the nanoprobe has to be assembled
using an electron microscope. The probe is coated with a biochemical link so
that specific antibodies for the particular test will attach to it.
"We use each
antibody because it has the ability to bond to its specific antigens. Once the
antibody binds to it, we can test for the amount of antigens present," Dr.
Lin says. That test is based on light refraction from antigens bound to the
antibodies on the nanoprobe.
"The properties
of the nanoparticles will give you a resonance shift upon a biological binding
reaction," Dr. Lin says. The fiber optic strand on which the sensors are
attached directs the resulting light waves to a spectrometer and a computer determines
the test result.
"It's
personalized medicine but it's also a form of preventative medicine," says
Taylor Bono, a UAH senior from Madison who is pursuing a medical career and has
helped with the research.
Until the packaging
and integration work is funded, the testing equipment resides on the corner of
a workbench in a lab in the UAH Optics Building. Early tests involved
identifying DNA profiles before the research evolved into antigens.
Bono did some of the
early sensitivity testing work along with UAH senior Molly Sanders of
Huntsville, who is an undergraduate concurrently working on her master's degree
in biology as part of UAH's Joint Undergraduate Master's Program (JUMP).
"Even though I
was unfamiliar with physics, I could help with the biological side of it. I
never would have known anything about this if I hadn't had this
opportunity," says Sanders. The two worked together in 2013 with Prostate
Specific Antigen solutions to determine the device's sensitivity. Sanders is
the principal author and Bono an author of a paper about this research.
"The most
significant aspect of the device medically is that it can detect trace levels
of cancer biomarkers in the blood," Sanders says.
The lab work is now
the responsibility of UAH junior Savannah Kaye of Lebanon, Penn. "I test
the nanoprobe tip in two different solutions to see if antibodies will stick to
it," she says.
UAH Associate Vice
President for Research Dr. Robert Lindquist, the former director of the Center
for Applied Optics, was an early contributor to the research, Dr. Lin says.
"He is a strong supporter of this project."
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