From Study Finds.org (June 8):
BALTIMORE — Ever since the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the country, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have been trying to engineer nanoparticles that can serve as a diagnostic tool for detecting the presence of COVID-19. Not only does it appear they’ve succeed, but in the process they’ve created a test that can yield results in just ten minutes.
In recent years, bioengineers have sought ways to use nanoparticles for all sorts of medical purposes. Nanoparticles are extraordinarily tiny materials that can perform whatever function they were engineered to do. They are commonly used in medicine as a way to deliver drugs to a person or to detect specific markers in a biological sample.
Last week the researchers announced that they have developed a test that uses plasmonic gold nanoparticles and changes colors in the presence of COVID-19. The great news about this test is that it can detect the virus in as quickly as ten minutes.
“Based on our preliminary results, we believe this promising new test may detect RNA material from the virus as early as the first day of infection. Additional studies are needed, however, to confirm whether this is indeed the case,” says lead author Dipanjan Pan, PhD, a professor of diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine and pediatrics at the school, in a university release.
All a patient needs to do is provide a nasal swab or saliva sample, and the nanoparticles do the rest of the work. The gold nanoparticles check to see if there is a specific protein present in the biological sample. The protein it looks for is unique to the coronavirus, and acts as a binding site for the nanoparticles. If the nanoparticles detect the presence of this protein then they turn the color of the liquid they are placed in from purple to blue. [read more]
Nice.
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