Multi-analyte Disease Diagnosis using MEMS Detection

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The project will develop a prototype, portable medical-diagnostic platform for the simultaneous detection of multiple disease or health indicators, based on nano-mechanical cantilever sensor arrays using a parallel optical readout. This will provide health professionals with the capability to have a significant impact in early-intervention, time-critical treatment (e.g. in emergency departments, by paramedics), with a big impact in resource-poor environments (e.g. developing countries). Cantilever-sensor platforms have already been demonstrated in the wider field for the diagnosis and monitoring of complex diseases, such as cancer, and more recently as a platform for studying antibiotic drug resistance of infectious disease. These sensors have not been universally adopted so far because of severe difficulties in performing a parallel readout of large sensor arrays, limitations in the fabrication of high-volume, low-cost cantilever sensors, and difficulties in the coating of individual sensors in arrays with specific biomarker-binding receptor layers. Our consortium has technical solutions for all these three bottlenecks that will allow for the full potential of this diagnostic technology to be realised for the first time. Central to this realisation is the development of customised sensors based on previous STFC-funded work on low-cost polymer-based microcantilever reflector arrays for space applications. Through highly specific coating of individual cantilevers with receptor layers, a target biomarker can be detected in very low sample volume (microlitres) with very high sensitivity due to the induced bending of the flexible polymer cantilever sensors upon attachment of the biomarker to the receptor layers. Cambridge have recently developed an optical method, based on interferometry, for reading out nanometre displacements of an arbitrary number of cantilevers simultaneously and in real time, without the need for precise optical alignment. These technologies can be merged to form a hand-held diagnostic device with robust, highly sensitive sensors and a read-out technique that is simple to operate, has low-cost electronic and optical components, and is highly flexible in its sensing response to any number of analytes.