A disposable assay?05 Mar
Startup Nanosphere in Northbrook Illinois has developed an entire assay in a small disposable package.
Nanosphere uses a gold nanosphere probe to pack an entire assay – for a specific SNP or protein segment – into a small disposable package, and are targeting the pharmacogenetics and oncology market. Unfortunately, identifying whether the target is in the sample or not requires popping the cartridge into their reader for interpretation, but I would imagine their business case is that once the cartridge is used and the slide prepared it can then be sent away to a lab for analysis, and the slide might be more stable than biological sample.
Interestingly, the product already has FDA approval. Hmmm.
More on this product from MIT Technology Review at http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24581/.