Find Out if You Have a Disease in Minutes
New discoveries may make it so finding out if you have a disease will be as quick as taking a home pregnancy test, or as easy as taking Relacore for a diet. A team led by scientists at the University of Leeds has developed a biosensor technology that uses antibodies to detect biomarkers. These are the molecules in the human body that are used as a marker for disease, and would essentially speed up the testing process for various diseases such as cancer.
The technology was developed through a European collaboration of researchers and commercial partners in a 2.7 million Euro project called ELISHA. It features new techniques for attaching antibodies to innovative surfaces, and novel electronic measurement methods that need no reagents or labels.
ELISHA was co-ordinated by Dr Paul Millner from the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, and managed by colleague Dr Tim Gibson. Says Dr Millner: “We believe this to be the next generation diagnostic testing. We can now detect almost any analyte faster, cheaper and more easily than the current accepted testing methodology.”
Currently blood and urine are tested for disease markers using a method called ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant Assay). Developed in the 1970s, the process takes an average of two hours to complete, is costly and can only be performed by highly trained staff.
The Leeds team are confident their new technology – which provides results in 15 minutes or less - could be developed into a small device the size of a mobile phone into which different sensor chips could be inserted, depending on the disease being tested for.
“We’ve designed simple instrumentation to make the biosensors easy to use and understand,” says Dr Millner. “They’ll work in a format similar to the glucose biosensor testing kits that diabetics currently use.”
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Filed under: Science by JMH
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