Scientists use nanosensors for first time to measure cancer biomarkers in blood
Scientists use nanosensors for first time to measure cancer biomarkers in blood. From Eurekalert:
New Haven, Conn.—A team led by Yale University researchers has used nanosensors to measure cancer biomarkers in whole blood for the first time. Their findings, which appear December 13 in the advanced online publication of Nature Nanotechnology, could dramatically simplify the way physicians test for biomarkers of cancer and other diseases.
The team—led by Mark Reed, Yale’s Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering & Applied Science, and Tarek Fahmy, an associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering—used nanowire sensors to detect and measure concentrations of two specific biomarkers: one for prostate cancer and the other for breast cancer.
“Nanosensors have been around for the past decade, but they only worked in controlled, laboratory settings,” Reed said. “This is the first time we’ve been able to use them with whole blood, which is a complicated solution containing proteins and ions and other things that affect detection.”
To overcome the challenge of whole blood detection, the researchers developed a novel device that acts as a filter, catching the biomarkers—in this case, antigens specific to prostate and breast cancer—on a chip while washing away the rest of the blood. Creating a buildup of the antigens on the chip allows for detection down to extremely small concentrations, on the order of picograms per milliliter, with 10 percent accuracy. This is the equivalent of being able to detect the concentration of a single grain of salt dissolved in a large swimming pool.
Until now, detection methods have only been able to determine whether or not a certain biomarker is present in the blood at sufficiently high concentrations for the detection equipment to give reliable estimates of its presence. “This new method is much more precise in reading out concentrations, and is much less dependent on the individual operator’s interpretation,” Fahmy said.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:37 AM
Hello,
I am not a medical person, so please bear with me on this question: How does this test compare/contrast to the CEA test currently being used? Eight months ago mM husband finished chemo, surgery, radiation, etc. from stage 3b colorectal cancer. He is about to go in for his 3rd post-treatment CEA blood test. I always felt that the current diagnostic therapy (colonoscopy, which my husband had 7 months before diagnosis and which was “clean”) for cancer seemed prehistoric in light of bionano advancements. I would love to know if your blood test is available to serve as a second opinion to his current CEA test. Thanks for your feedback.