IoP team has developed a nanoscale molecular dam for ultrafast protein enrichment with potential applications for qucik screening of cancers and other diseases (work published in Journal of American Chemical Society, 2012, and featured in JACS Spotlights)
Rare target protein detection for disease screening or early stage diagnosis has been challenging in biomedical field. A major hurdle in developing these systems is picking out the molecules of interest from complex biological samples and concentrating them in one location for detection. Now Prof. Chia-Fu Chou, an IoP Research Fellow, and his postdoctoral fellow Dr. Kuo-Tang Liao reported a new approach of nanoscale molecular dam, to enhance mass transport for ultrafast protein enrichment in nanofluidic channels by electrodeless dielectrophoresis under physiological buffer conditions. Dielectric or insulating nanoconstrictions, down to 30 nm in size, embedded in nanofluidic device, serve as field focusing lens capable of magnifying the applied field to 70,000 times. Empowered by this strong field and the associated field gradient occurred at the nanoconstrictions, they demonstrated protein enrichment of 100,000-fold in 20 seconds, which is orders of magnitude faster than most reported methods. Their study opens up further possibilities of using nanoscale molecular dams in miniaturized sensing platforms for rapid screening and sensitive detection of disease biomarkers, such as cancer, influenza, and acute myocardial infarction.
Their work was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 8742−8745 (DOI:10.1021/ja3016523), and featured in JACS Spotlights: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 10307. The team has filed U.S. patent application and is currently pursuing R.O.C. patent filing. The project was supported by Academia Sinica (AS Nano Program, AS NanoCore Facility, and the Foresight Project), National Science Council (Taiwan) and the Asian Office of U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AOARD).
Journal Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja3016523