Nanotechnology Products and Applications
Product Details
Product: The i-Screen
Manufacturer: Inanovate
Product page: (external link)
Product Sector: Medical → Diagnostics → Probe
Details:
Inanovate is developing a low cost, accessible (point-of-care) diagnostic platform for the early detection and monitoring of cancer. The platform, called the i-Screen combines three novel and proprietary components:
- A nano-scale protein immobilization system on a disposable biochip substrate.
- A protein screening procedure that screens for biomarkers within patient samples in real time.
- Low cost, desk top hardware to process the disposable test.
By making accurate cancer screening available and affordable to everyone, the i-Screen will help move the healthcare industry's focus away from expensive, painful and often inefficient late stage cancer treatment, towards early stage diagnosis and lower impact, lower cost therapies.
Protein biochip technology has been emerging as a leading technology for biomarker discovery, drug development and diagnostics for the past 10 years.
Proteins help drive behavior within the human body, accordingly, understanding them is critical to developing new drugs and diagnostic products. However, many problems are faced by researchers looking to study the behavior of these complex molecules due to their fragile nature (causing them to change their behavior when interacted with by an external probe or surface), and their cross reactivity to one another (due to the vast number of proteins in the human proteome). These problems are magnified when proteins are integrated into clinical diagnostic systems.
Many methods are available to study proteins, such a Mass Spectrometry, 2-D Gels, ELISA's and bead based biochip systems. However all these lack the cost effectiveness, ease of use, and potential multiplexing capacity of the 2-D micro-array biochip. Unfortunately, because proteins are complex and fragile, when they are attached to a surface for further use (such as on a 2-D micro-array biochip), they are often rendered useless for further study. This causes major sensitivity and consistency problems with protein biochip systems, blocking the development of truly quantitative protein biochips.
Inanovate's nanoparticle substrate technology solves this surface-to-protein interface problem, positioning it as a core enabling component for the next generation of protein research and clinical diagnostics. This unique substrate technology is currently available in the 2-D micro array format.
