Electronic Device To Use Specimen Cards To Diagnose Disease

Scientists have developed an electronic device that could be used for specimen or "wellness" cards for the diagnosis of disease from a drop of a person's saliva or blood.

Using a phenomenon known as giant magnetoresistance (GMR), the device can detect samples on much smaller areas compared to older technologies. The same technology was used at the heart of miniaturized hard disk drives to create the new rapid-screening sensor.

The ultimate aim of the scientists is to develop a card-swipe instrument through which an array of micrometer-sized, magnetically tagged addresses can be interrogated in a manner analogous to a credit card reader.

The instrument was developed by Marc Porter, Ph.D., from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA) and colleagues in Iowa, Arizona, and Minnesota, and was described in two articles in the November 1, 2008 issue of Analytical Chemistry.

As a test, Dr. Porter demonstrated that the GMR sensor could detect as few as 800 magnetic beads of microscopic dimensions. "Several laboratories have begun to transition GMRs from the data storage domain to that of the bioanalytical sciences," the paper states. "We believe that, by leveraging advances made in the magnetic recording industry (for example portable digital music players), a robust, field-deployable, assay device capable of sensing single-binding events is just over the horizon."

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