Dr. Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD, and Associate Professor at Washington University St Louis http://wustl.edu, School of Engineering & Applied Science, is working to speed up medical diagnostics. Using artificial bio receptors and metal nanostructures, Dr. Singamaneni and his team are setting the groundwork to create durable, Point-of-Care (POC) diagnostics for heart attacks and kidney injuries.
The researchers think that plasmonic sensors based on an artificial antibody platform could be easily implemented using a miniaturized battery-operated spectrometer to potentially enable testing in POC settings.
As Dr. Jerry Morrissey PhD Research Professor WU Department of Anesthesiology, reports, “Artificial antibodies are quite stable as compared to natural antibodies. Diagnostic platforms based on artificial antibodies will allow timely diagnosis of various injuries or diseases at urban or rural non-hospital based clinics while the patient is still present.”
“One of the biggest advantages for this technology is to be able to rapidly develop bio- recognition elements for any protein biomarker,” Dr. Singamaneni said. “The conventional method forces us to use natural antibodies which take much longer to develop”.
“Artificial antibodies can be adapted to various proteins, creating a platform that can be used in a wide range of diagnostics. Moreover these artificial antibodies are remarkably stable as compared to their natural counterparts.”
The Washington University Office of Technology Management (OTM) http://ofm.wustl.edu sees immediate potential in this platform and is pushing for its commercialization so the researchers at Washington University can turn their ideas into marketable products.