Cambridge scientists have received funding to create a cheap, portable device that could detect avian flu and even prevent bioterrorism, using sensors a tenth the size of a grain of salt
Cambridge scientists have received funding to create a cheap, portable device that could detect avian flu and even prevent bioterrorism, using sensors a tenth the size of a grain of salt
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council (MRC) are part of a team which has just been awarded a grant of nearly £1M to create a device which would be able to detect diseases in humans speedily and cheaply.
The device will be small and portable, similar to a mobile phone, and will be able to detect cancer, as well as infectious viruses such as avian flu. The sensors could be used at a patient’s bedside or out in the field, as well as in specialist laboratories. It will have a video connection and be wireless.
The project is the fruit of a rare collaboration between engineers at the University’s Department of Engineering and scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC). The device works by reading the tiny electrical signals which are given off when DNA strands interact. The university’s engineering team, led by Professor Piero Migliorato, have, for the first time, found a way to detect these signals using a promising low-cost technology.
They have created tiny electronic transistors, ten times smaller than a grain of salt, called Thin Film Transistors (TFTs). Human samples can be placed on a small disposable card containing the TFTs. The card is inserted into the phone-like device, where the electrical signals will be analysed by combining the samples with special proteins, that have been developed by Dr Paul Ko Ferrigno’s team at MRC. This process shows whether a sample does or does not have tell-tale proteins which would suggest the patient has a disease. The card, which will be disposable, “will be cheap, probably costing pence rather than pounds,” said Professor Migliorato.
The grant comes from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Other groups in the consortium include the Oxford University Chemistry Department (Dr Jason Davis’s team), and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire (Professor Ejaz Huq) who will provide essential expertise in surface chemistry and microfabrication respectively.
Dr Ko Ferrigno said: “The sooner we pick up symptoms of a disease the better we can treat it. Scientists will, at last, have a tool which can answer literally hundreds of thousand of questions in one go, and all for the price of a test tube.” The team also believe the device can be used for environmental protection, and even the prevention of bioterrorism.
It is hoped that the device will be completed in the next two to five years.
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