Just months after setting a record for detecting the smallest single virus in solution, researchers have announced a new breakthrough: They used a nano-enhanced version of their patented microcavity biosensor to detect a single cancer marker protein, which is one-sixth the size of the smallest virus, and even smaller molecules below the mass of all known markers.
This achievement shatters the previous record, setting a new benchmark for the most sensitive limit of detection, and may significantly advance early disease diagnostics. Unlike current technology, which attaches a fluorescent molecule, or label, to the antigen to allow it to be seen, the new process detects the antigen without an interfering label. Stephen Arnold, university professor of applied physics at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), published details of the achievement in Nano Letters, a publication of the American Chemical Society…….
http://www.nanomagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2260:nano-scientists-reach-the-holy-grail-in-label-free-cancer-marker-detection-single-molecules&catid=38:nano-news&Itemid=159