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Research Offers Promise of Devices That Can Detect Disease With a Drop of Blood
An anonymous reader writes "An NJIT research professor known for his cutting-edge work with carbon nanotubes is overseeing the manufacture of a prototype lab-on-a-chip that would someday enable a physician to detect disease or virus from just one drop of liquid, including blood. 'Scalable nano-bioprobes with sub-cellular resolution for cell detection,' (Elsevier, Vol. 45), which will publish on July 15, 2013 but is available now online, describes how NJIT research professors Reginald Farrow and Alokik Kanwal, his former postdoctoral fellow, and their team have created a carbon nanotube-based device to noninvasively and quickly detect mobile single cells with the potential to maintain a high degree of spatial resolution."
Of all the fluids they could use, blood is one of them! Who'd have thunk it?!
I've heard they can also detect gender with a single drop of semen.
that brings out the very worst gee whiz flying nuclear powered personal cars batman style here on slashdot ?
how big is a drop ?
About 50 - 100 uL (microliter, one cubic mm)
What sensitivity do you need to detect viruses and bacteria ?
you need to be able to detect things in the organism per mL range
A mL is 1,000 uL
Therefore, by definition, a drop of blood is prettty much useless for detecting viruses and bacteria in a serious way (oh, you died of S aureus sepsis cause we only sampled a small drop of blood and missed the infection...sorry bout that...)
You mean, like these guys?
sig: sauer
"Elsevier" is a publisher, not a publication. The actual journal reference is Biosensors and Bioelectronics Volume 45, 15 July 2013, Pages 267–273
From 2009: http://www.ted.com/talks/george_whitesides_a_lab_the_size_of_a_postage_stamp.html
"Among his solutions is a low-cost "lab-on-a-chip," made of paper and carpet tape. The paper wicks bodily fluids -- urine, for example -- and turns color to provide diagnostic information, such as how much glucose or protein is present. His goal is to distribute these simple paper diagnostic systems to developing countries, where people with basic training can administer tests and send results to distant doctors via cameraphone."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This isn't going to go anywhere. Vampires are going to buy it and bury it so you have to give pints so they can send it to the "lab" for testing.
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