Research Offers Promise of Devices That Can Detect Disease With a Drop of Blood 27
An anonymous reader writes "An NJIT research professor known for his cutting-edge work with carbon nanotubes is overseeing the manufacture of a prototype lab-on-a-chip that would someday enable a physician to detect disease or virus from just one drop of liquid, including blood. 'Scalable nano-bioprobes with sub-cellular resolution for cell detection,' (Elsevier, Vol. 45), which will publish on July 15, 2013 but is available now online, describes how NJIT research professors Reginald Farrow and Alokik Kanwal, his former postdoctoral fellow, and their team have created a carbon nanotube-based device to noninvasively and quickly detect mobile single cells with the potential to maintain a high degree of spatial resolution."
what is it about biotech (Score:2, Informative)
that brings out the very worst gee whiz flying nuclear powered personal cars batman style here on slashdot ?
how big is a drop ?
About 50 - 100 uL (microliter, one cubic mm)
What sensitivity do you need to detect viruses and bacteria ?
you need to be able to detect things in the organism per mL range
A mL is 1,000 uL
Therefore, by definition, a drop of blood is prettty much useless for detecting viruses and bacteria in a serious way (oh, you died of S aureus sepsis cause we only sampled a small drop of blood and missed the infection...sorry bout that...)
"Elsevier" is not a journal (Score:3, Informative)
"Elsevier" is a publisher, not a publication. The actual journal reference is Biosensors and Bioelectronics Volume 45, 15 July 2013, Pages 267–273