Nanorobotic biosensors platform for disease biomarker detection (Resilience Fund)

Nanovery正在利用纳米机器人技术的新发展来开发诊断世界上最致命疾病的新方法，首先是癌症。早期发现以及密切跟踪癌症进展和对治疗的反应大大改善了患者的体验和恢复的机会。医学成像和手术组织活检是有限的，并且与风险、高成本和患者不便有关。液体活检可以方便地收集和分析血液样本中的生物标志物，是一种潜在的信息更丰富、侵入性更小的组织活检替代方法。这种干预措施正在成为筛查和频繁监测的突破性工具。液体活检包括循环肿瘤来源物质的分析，包括循环肿瘤DNA （ctDNA）和循环肿瘤细胞。Nanovery Limited成立于2018年，旨在开发一种新的诊断方法，利用DNA纳米机器人靶向循环肿瘤DNA （ctDNA）中的特定癌症突变，使临床医生能够进行更简单、侵入性更小、更快、更便宜的液体活检，以便在护理点进行癌症诊断和监测。这种革命性的方法是基于纳米机器人设备，将其添加到血液样本中以捕获ctDNA，并可以区分源自癌细胞的微小基因突变，并在血液中留下痕量生物标志物。当纳米机器人与存在的生物标志物结合时，它会产生易于读取的荧光信号。由于纳米机器人序列与ctDNA匹配并结合，即使在癌症处于早期阶段，它也能提供特定、准确和敏感的诊断。该项目旨在开发纳米机器人原型，并评估诊断方法的敏感性和特异性，以解决筛查和监测癌症等方面的大量未满足需求和当前瓶颈。

Nanovery is making use of emerging developments in nanorobotics to develop new approaches to diagnosing the world's deadliest diseases, starting with cancer. Early detection together with close tracking of cancer progression and response to treatment greatly improves a patient's experience and chances of recovery. Medical imaging and surgical tissue biopsies are limited and associated with risks, high costs and inconvenience for patients.The liquid biopsy, with the convenience of collecting and analysing biomarkers in blood samples, is a potentially more informative and less invasive alternative to tissue biopsies. This intervention is emerging as a breakthrough tool for screening and frequent monitoring. The liquid biopsy comprises the analysis of circulating tumour-derived material including circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumour cells.Nanovery Limited was founded in 2018 to develop a novel diagnostic approach using DNA nanorobots to target specific cancer mutations in circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), enabling clinicians to conduct simpler, less invasive, faster and cheaper liquid biopsies for cancer diagnosis and monitoring at the point-of-care. The revolutionary approach is based on nanorobot devices that are added to a blood sample to capture ctDNA, and can distinguish tiny genetic mutations originating in cancer cells and leaving trace biomarkers in blood. The nanorobot produces an easy-to-read fluorescent signal when it binds to the biomarker if present. As the nanorobot sequence matches and binds to the ctDNA, it provides specific, accurate and sensitive diagnosis, even when cancer is at an early stage.This project aims to develop nanorobot prototypes and assess the sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic approach to address a large unmet need and current bottlenecks to screening and monitoring cancer and beyond.