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Molecular diagnostics at home: Chemists design rapid, simple, inexpensive tests using DNA

Electrochemical test's sensing principle may be generalized to many different targets, leading to inexpensive devices that could detect dozens of disease markers in less than 5 minutes.

The key breakthrough underlying this new technology came by chance. "While working on the first generation of these DNA-base tests, we realized that proteins, despite their small size (typically 1000 times smaller than a human hair) are big enough to run into each other and create steric effect (or traffic) at the surface of a sensor, which drastically reduced the signal of our tests," said Sahar Mahshid, postdoctoral scholar at the University of Montreal and first author of the study. "Instead of having to fight this basic repulsion effect, we instead decided to embrace this force and build a novel signaling mechanism, which detects steric effects when a protein marker binds to the DNA test."

Montreal scientists score possible breakthrough for rapid diagnostic medical tests

-Technique using DNA and electricity can detect a dozen antibodies at once – all in minutes-

A simple and fast chemical process developed by scientists in Montreal could allow family doctors to one day use equipment as straightforward and cheap as a diabetic's blood sugar tests to diagnose a range of diseases in minutes from their offices, instead of waiting days for results to come back from a lab.

U of Montreal Team Develops Fast Electrochemical Sensor for Multiplexed Protein Marker Detection

Researchers from the University of Montreal have developed a DNA-based electrochemical sensor that can detect the presence of multiple protein markers in whole blood in less than 10 minutes. The sensor could serve as the basis of a point-of-care device to diagnose a range of diseases and conditions including cancer, allergies, autoimmune diseases, and sexually transmitted diseases.