In-Vitro Diagnostic

Commercial fluorescence activated cell sorters have been highly successful in the past 40 years at rapidly and accurately aiding medical diagnosis and biological studies, but they are bulky and too expensive ($200,000 -$1,000,000) for many labs or doctors’ offices. Most significantly, these types of cell sorters can present biohazard concerns for operators and may damage cells or alter their properties, making them unfit for further study. To address these issues, researchers at Penn State have developed a new lab-on-a-chip cell sorting device based on acoustic waves.

Immunoassays have been central to biomedical research and clinical diagnostics, but their use requires large sample volumes as well as expensive equipment and reagents to perform the tests. Microfluidic device have the potential to overcome these challenges, and a number of devices have been built that offer parallel processing, high sensitivity using small sample volumes, or the ability to screen for a wide number of markers. None have been able to have all three capabilities in one system, truly making microfluidics a viable option over traditional equipment.

A typical preliminary test for TB includes culturing the samples for at least 1-2 weeks in a lab, followed by examination under a fluorescence microscope. The lack of rapid, accurate, and inexpensive point-of-care tools for detecting low amounts of M. Tuberculosis is a critical bottleneck in early diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
A team of researchers from Clemson University and Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning has collaboratively developed a rapid and flexible nano-biosensor for diagnosing TB in early stages using smart phones. They reported their findings in the September 8, 2015 online edition of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics ("Flexible Ag-C60 nano-biosensors based on surface plasmon coupled emission for clinical and forensic applications").

Diagnostic apps, wearables and bedside devices are about to go mainstream – but will they empty the doctor's waiting room, or send people stampeding to it?

The tool works like a home pregnancy test and should help doctors assess potential disease outbreaks, according to the developers.
Standard approaches for testing viral infections accurately and reliably require technical expertise and expensive equipment such as Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
But in developing areas far away from big hospitals and laboratories with such equipment, the immediate concern when fever strikes is to quickly establish whether the outbreak is a serious disease that might need quarantine or a less severe illness like the common flu.

This week, at the World Congress of Dermatology, a smartphone powered mole tracking device is being introduced by MetaOptima, a Vancouver, B.C. firm. The MoleScope is a small attachment that clips over an iPhone’s built-in forward facing camera, which acts to illuminate and magnify suspected moles.
The MoleScope comes with its own app that is used to capture the images and to pass them (HIPAA compliant) to your dermatologist for professional review. The app can be set to remind the patient to take snapshots at particular intervals, allowing for close monitoring of suspected moles that may turn out to be melanoma tumors.