Technical Report abstract


Nature Medicine 15, 1327 - 1332 (2009)
Published online: 11 October 2009 | doi:10.1038/nm.2032

Matrix-insensitive protein assays push the limits of biosensors in medicine

Richard S Gaster1,2,11, Drew A Hall3,11, Carsten H Nielsen4,5,6, Sebastian J Osterfeld7,8, Heng Yu8, Kathleen E Mach9, Robert J Wilson7, Boris Murmann3, Joseph C Liao9,10, Sanjiv S Gambhir1,4,10 & Shan X Wang3,7,10


Advances in biosensor technologies for in vitro diagnostics have the potential to transform the practice of medicine. Despite considerable work in the biosensor field, there is still no general sensing platform that can be ubiquitously applied to detect the constellation of biomolecules in diverse clinical samples (for example, serum, urine, cell lysates or saliva) with high sensitivity and large linear dynamic range. A major limitation confounding other technologies is signal distortion that occurs in various matrices due to heterogeneity in ionic strength, pH, temperature and autofluorescence. Here we present a magnetic nanosensor technology that is matrix insensitive yet still capable of rapid, multiplex protein detection with resolution down to attomolar concentrations and extensive linear dynamic range. The matrix insensitivity of our platform to various media demonstrates that our magnetic nanosensor technology can be directly applied to a variety of settings such as molecular biology, clinical diagnostics and biodefense.

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  1. Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  2. Medical Scientist Training Program, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  4. Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  5. Cluster for Molecular Imaging and Department of Clinical Physiology, Nuclear Medicine and Positron Emission Tomography, Rigshospitalet & University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
  6. Section for Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  8. MagArray, Inc., Sunnyvale, California, USA.
  9. Department of Urology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  10. Bio-X Program, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  11. These authors contributed equally to the work.

Correspondence to: Shan X Wang3,7,10 e-mail: sxwang@stanford.edu

Correspondence to: Sanjiv S Gambhir1,4,10 e-mail: sgambhir@stanford.edu



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