Just a drop of blood the new sensor can measure cancer and cholera

According to the latest issue of "Journal of the American Chemical Society," it reported that the International team includes Canadian researchers have developed a new, including graphene sensors. The biosensor to detect cholera toxin not only has a very high sensitivity, but also provide early diagnosis for cancer and other diseases. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor is a medical diagnosis of optical technology for high sensitivity and specificity. The researchers found that adding graphene may cause SPR sensor signal multiplied, so that a single molecule can anchor an ultrathin layer of a particular disease signal.

The sensor can detect within minutes of the cholera toxin, by contrast, the current detection techniques require hours or even days. The technology can also be extended to detect almost any including cancer disease markers.


The researchers said that in addition to faster and greatly improved due to the sensitivity of the sensor can be more easily detected small amounts of biological markers, in order to create conditions for the early diagnosis and prognosis of cancer and other diseases. This means that, just use a drop of blood sample from a patient acupuncture, can detect the biomarkers of disease.

SPR biosensor is significantly larger than the standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has a higher sensitivity, laboratory-grown graphene proof than before the use of other forms of graphene is more suitable for the development of new sensors. Graphene is called chemical vapor deposition growth technique to create a large-area graphene nearly defect-free, uniform surface of the graphene helps amplifying the sensor signal.