Detecting disease markers in blood can be quite challenging, particularly when looking for rare proteins signaling the existence of a tumor. This is because blood is rich in all kind of molecules and compounds that create the false positive “noise” that makes it hard to see what is being searched for. Now a team of researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation in Germany have developed a new method that does away with the typical process of purifying the blood sample to remove the noise, but that instead focuses directly on its target.
After a blood sample is taken, a mixture of tiny magnetic nanoparticles coated with antibodies attracted by the target are added. These stick to the protein marker being searched for and a magnet outside the test tube can simply pull these particles out of whole blood. To make them visible, though, another set of antibodies with fluorescent nanoparticles is added that also stick to the same protein. The resulting glow is still weak, so the team resonates the particles using a fluctuating external magnetic field, making the fluorescing particles undulate and glow in sync, resulting in visible detection of the protein target.
Fraunhofer: Detecting tumor markers easily…