Carbon nanotube transistors orders of magnitude better at spotting cancer, say bioengineers
February 21, 2013
Mitchell Lerner at the University of Pennsylvania and associates have revealed a technique that uses an array of carbon nanotube transistors on a silicon chip to detect a biomarker of prostate cancer known as osteopontin (OPN), The Physics arXiv Blog reports.
The transistor can detect OPN at concentrations of 1 picogram per milliliter — a concentration three orders of magnitude weaker than ELISA can manage. ELISA is the state of the art technique for spotting OPN.
The carbon nanotube transistors can be made sensitive to other diseases, including Lyme disease and Salmonella.
- Mitchell B. Lerner et al., Detecting Lyme Disease Using Antibody-Functionalized Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Transistors, arXiv, 2013, arxiv.org/abs/1302.2961
- Mitchell B. Lerner et al., A Carbon Nanotube Immunosensor for Salmonella, arXiv, 2013, arxiv.org/abs/1302.2959
- Mitchell B. Lerner et al., Hybrids of a Genetically Engineered Antibody and a Carbon Nanotube Transistor for Detection of Prostate Cancer Biomarkers,arXiv, 2013, arxiv.org/abs/1302.2958