ABSTRACT
There is a need in health care for quick, reliable, and cost-effective in vitro diagnostic testing platforms. For example, in the critical situation of emergency room chest pain diagnostics, rapidly available information saves resources and lives. This becomes even more medically significant when multiple patients present with symptoms simultaneously. Currently, the availability in most hospitals of quick-assessment technology sensitive to subnanomolar concentrations is rather limited. Furthermore, although experimental devices have recently been demonstrated by Ligler et al. [1], there does not exist at this time any marketready version of such technology for use in remote applications (i.e., battlefield and/or rural medicine, point-of-incident trauma care, etc.). Other applications that could benefit from affordable, portable, and sensitive (subnanomolar) immunoassay technology include: (1) the detection of biological and chemical warfare agents, (2) pollution monitoring, (3) life science research,
(4) agricultural/food testing, (5) veterinary medicine, and (6) drug screening. Alternatively, rapid and sensitive assays for nucleic acids in biological samples in the burgeoning molecular diagnostics area are contemplated.
