New Sensors Can Track How Diseases Evolve

One of the main goals researchers in medicine have been striving towards over the past few years is developing extremely efficient sensors that could be implanted in the human body and used to monitor and track the development of various diseases. Having this ability would ensure that the most correct course of treatment is taken in each individual case, bringing personalized medicine one step closer. Now, a group of scientists has developed such a sensor, which they say could be used for the job, PhysOrg reports.

The investigators basically designed a new type of very small chemical sensors, which are made out of goal-coated nanoparticles. The instruments can be inserted into patients' cells, where they can be made to provide scientists with feedback on various processes going on inside. The way this is accomplished is by measuring the properties of light that is bounced back by the sensors, as they are being probed with a laser. The team that developed the product says that, in this way, the diseases can be monitored remotely, depending on the type of laser used.

But the thing researchers will undoubtedly focus most on is the vibrations that proteins and other molecules in cells will generate. When light hits the nanoparticles, photons inside are absorbed, and then re-emitted. When that happens, they cause proteins in their vicinity to vibrate at certain frequencies. As a disease progresses and changes the shape and function of molecules inside the cells, the frequency of the vibrations they produce will also change. The team has sufficiently developed machines to detect and measure these minute changes, which sets the basis for their new system.

“By creating a sensor that can safely be implanted into tissue and combining this with a sensitive light-measurement technique, we have developed a useful device that will help diagnose and track disease in patients,” says Dr Colin Campbell, the leader of the team that developed the new chemical sensors. He is a research fellow at the Edinburgh and St. Andrews Research School of Chemistry EaStCHEM. The organization supplied the funding for the new work, alongside the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Details of the study were published in the latest issue of three journals” Chemical Communications, the Journal of Biophotonics and ACSNano.