. As a result, doctors can analyze biological samples from patients to check their health or to monitor the progress of a particular therapy.
These samples need to be cleaned and diluted prior to analysis, and current medical diagnostic techniques rely on healthcare facilities and laboratories to perform these routine analyses.
This is a lengthy process that requires trained personnel and expensive instrumentation to extract, transport, store, process and analyze samples in centralized locations.
Furthermore, in times of global crisis like the ongoing pandemic, the pressure of thousands of analytical requests can saturate and collapse the healthcare system.
Smart devices for health care
Point-of-care devices, on the other hand, are small automated tools that are capable of performing diagnostics in decentralized locations and can provide quick answers.
These devices could overcome the inherent limitation of having to process samples through a centralized system, allowing anyone to monitor their health at home, using just a single blood sample. small is extracted.
However, the development of these devices has been burdened by technical challenges associated with the measurement of biological samples.
Biomarkers for some diseases and infections are present in samples only in very small amounts, thus posing a challenge to develop extremely sensitive detection techniques..
While increasing the surface area of biosensors can increase device sensitivity, these surfaces tend to quickly become clogged and contaminated, rendering them unusable.
Solutions for Hectic Diagnostic Procedures
Although there was no previously known method to reliably generate electrodes using such nano and nanostructured substrates, the researchers reported a method simple to create such materials.
The mechanism is based on the application of electrical pulses to a flat gold surface in the presence of sodium chloride and a surfactant that can form micelles in solution.
These electrical pulses drive the response appropriately to etch and separate the gold from the surface and, in turn, grow nanostructures and form nanopores.
The formation of these nanostructures also creates a large surface area, which is beneficial for increasing the sensitivity of the assays, while the formation of nanopore substrates is ideal for preventing contamination from biological samples.
The researchers further demonstrated this new technology by building a biosensor to detect prostate cancer. The electrode is sensitive enough to distinguish between a group of prostate cancer and healthy donors using only a small amount of plasma or urine sample.
No dilution or pretreatment steps are used, which means the technology can easily be used to diagnose cancer at the point of care.
This is essential for the future development of point-of-care devices and diagnostic tests that work with biological samples.. The ability to detect low concentrations of relevant biomarkers with powerful performance opens the door to possibilities in the field of cancer, pathogen and other diseases diagnostics.
Source: Medindia
