Commercialization of Magneto-Nanosensor Immunoassay Platform for Cancer Diagnosis

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目旨在优化用于癌症诊断的有前途的磁纳米传感器技术。通过采用计算机磁盘驱动器行业的通用技术，这种简单的设备使研究人员能够同时检测生物液体中超低浓度的多种蛋白质或生物标志物。这些生物标志物中的几种的丰度和随时间的变化，当结合在一起时，可以成为一种强大的诊断工具。 此时，测量这些生物标志物所需的工具，如质谱法或ELISA免疫测定法，速度慢，价格昂贵，难以使用，并且通常不具有很好的重现性。此外，许多令人感兴趣的生物标志物以如此低的浓度存在，以至于除了最复杂和最复杂的方法之外，它们根本无法被检测到。 正在开发的技术结合了高灵敏度，易用性，快速定量和低成本的优点。这些显著的改进是可能的，部分原因是使用了极其敏感的巨磁阻（GMR）传感器，并且还因为血液样本中没有天然的磁信号源，这导致非常低的背景信号。 此外，这些传感器已被修改为仅检测那些实际上与传感器结合的磁性纳米颗粒标签-漂浮在附近的未结合标签几乎完全被忽略。这意味着，与大多数其他检测技术不同，它不需要去除多余的标记来确定结果。这允许测定部分或完全免洗涤，这再次大大增加了灵敏度和易用性。此外，不需要激光或复杂的光学器件，因为信号是传感器电阻的简单变化。这意味着辅助仪器可以非常简单且具有成本效益。 最初的重点是肺癌，在那里没有有效的方法来早期发现这种疾病，研究人员正试图验证一组与无症状肺癌相关的六种生物标志物。长期目标是有一个诊断测试，允许医生诊断患者时，他们仍然在第一阶段，并面临70- 80%的生存率，而不是今天的情况下，大多数患者没有得到诊断，直到他们达到IIIB或IV阶段，并面临不到10%的生存机会。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project seeks to optimize a promising magneto-nanosensor technology for use in cancer diagnosis. By adapting a common technology from the computer disk drive industry, this simple device enables researchers to simultaneously detect multiple proteins, or biomarkers, at ultra low concentrations in biological fluids. The abundance and change over time of several of these biomarkers, when taken together, can be a powerful diagnostic tool. At this time, the tools required to measure these biomarkers, such as mass spectrometry or ELISA immunoassays, are slow, expensive, difficult to use, and often not very reproducible. In addition, many interesting biomarkers are present at such low concentrations that they simply cannot be detected with any but the most sophisticated and involved methods. The technology under development combines the advantages of high sensitivity, ease of use, rapid quantification, and low cost. These drastic improvements are possible in part due to the use of extremely sensitive giant magnetoresistive (GMR) sensors, and also because there are no natural magnetic signal sources in a blood sample, which results in a very low background signal. Additionally, these sensors have been modified to detect only those magnetic nanoparticle labels which are actually bound to the sensors - unbound labels floating nearby are almost completely ignored. That means that, unlike most other assay technologies, it is not necessary to remove the excess labels to determine the result. This allows the assay to be partially or completely wash-free, which again greatly increases the sensitivity and ease of use. Furthermore, no laser or complex optics are required because the signal is a simple change in electrical resistance of the sensor. This means that the ancillary instrumentation can be very simple and cost-efficient. With an initial focus on lung cancer, where there are no effective methods for early detection of the disease, researchers are attempting to validate a panel of six biomarkers that have been associated with asymptomatic lung cancer. The long term goal is to have a diagnostic test that allows doctors to diagnose patients when they are still in Stage I and face survival rates of 70-80%, as opposed today's situation where most patients don't get diagnosed until they reach Stage IIIB or IV and face less than a 10% chance of survival.