ABSTRACT
Conventional clinical diagnostic technologies aim to detect the symptoms of a disease. These methods include measurements of a particular antibody produced by the body in response to foreign body infection or observation of a specic bacterium known to cause a disease. Such methods are considered to be slow and inefcient as they involve identifying or measuring a disease after the person has contracted it. In addition, most current clinical analyzers are dedicated only to a single class of analytes and are hampered by bulky, expensive, and laboratory-sized instrumentation, which is not amenable to use in portable applications or in remote locations. Recent advances in nanotechnology-based diagnostics could potentially alleviate some of the current limitations in clinical diagnosis and subsequently in therapeutic systems. This chapter will discuss methods in point-of-care (PoC) diagnostics, the current status, and future trends in nanodevices and systems for clinical diagnostics. Nanodevices and systems, when implemented within the current diagnostic technology, have the potential to analyze the entire genome in minutes instead of hours. For example, based on which DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sequence is deviated from
8.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 131 8.2 Clinical Diagnostics...................................................................................... 132
8.2.1 Biomarkers ........................................................................................ 132 8.2.2 Detection of Biomarkers ................................................................... 134
8.3 Point-of-Care Diagnostic Systems ................................................................ 135 8.3.1 Microuidics and Lab-on-Chip Technology .................................... 136
8.4 Nanotechnology in Diagnostics .................................................................... 138 8.4.1 Nanotechnology-Based Sample Preparation .................................... 138 8.4.2 Nanotechnology-Based Transduction and Biosensors ...................... 138
8.4.2.1 Nanoparticle-Based Transduction and Biosensors ............ 139 8.4.2.2 NEMS/MEMS Biosensors ................................................. 140
8.5 Current Trends and Future Perspective ........................................................ 142 References .............................................................................................................. 143
the normal sequence, the doctor will be able to determine a person’s predisposition to a specic disease. This chapter will also review the current research in micro-uidic, lab-on-chip (LoC), and biochips or bio-nano-electro-mechanical systems (bio-NEMS), where a number of complex diagnostic procedures, such as sample collection, sample pretreatment, sample preparation, target detection, postprocessing, and waste disposal, are integrated into one platform so that PoC diagnosis is implemented. Finally, we will discuss some of the challenges and safety aspects of nanodiagnostic systems.
