Home > Press > ‘Femtomolar Optical Tweezers’ May Enable Sensitive Blood Tests
Basic scheme of an optical tweezer-based sensor of biological particles. A microsphere covered with a specific antigen (such as a virus or other infectious agent) is trapped and pulled away from a surface containing the corresponding antibodies. The minimum amount of force applied to the tweezers to break the bonds can provide information on the concentration of antibodies on the surface.
Credit: NIST |
Abstract:
Cutting-edge "tweezers" are so sensitive that they can feel the tell-tale tug of tiny concentrations of pathogens in blood samples, yet don't ever need to be sterilized—or even held—as they are ephemeral and weightless. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has licensed a patented "optical tweezers" technique for detecting and measuring very small concentrations of a biological substance—such as a virus on a surface. NIST has issued a non-exclusive license for the technology to Haemonetics, a global health care company that provides blood management technologies for hospitals and blood and plasma collection agencies.
Optical tweezers are actually tightly focused laser beams. They can trap certain objects, such as latex microspheres or biological cells, and move them around in water. This occurs because the lasers' electric fields interact with electric charges on the objects.
To detect disease-causing agents, researchers can coat a microsphere with antibody particles and then touch it to a surface containing infectious particles (antigens). The antigens then stick to the antibodies on the sphere, reminiscent of Velcro, in which loops on one strip combine with hooks on the other. By determining how much laser power is required to pull the microsphere away from the surface, one can then calculate the amount of force needed to break off the antibodies from the antigens and thus count the number of individual antigens that were bound to the sphere. This in turn can detect and count biological antigens at extraordinarily low "femtomolar" concentrations—roughly equivalent to one antigen particle per quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) water molecules.
Following up on earlier work in optical tweezers in the industrial and academic research communities in the 1970s, the licensed technology was patented in 1997 (patent #5,620,857), as a result of research conducted under the NIST BioSensor Consortium. The inventors are Howard Weetall (since retired), Kristian Helmerson, and guest researcher Rani Kishore.
For more information on these or other NIST technologies, should contact Terry Lynch, NIST Office of Technology Partnerships, , (301) 975-2691.
####
About NIST
Founded in 1901, NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
For more information, please click here
Contacts:
Ben Stein
(301) 975-3097
Copyright © NIST
If you have a comment, please Contact us.Issuers of news releases, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.
Related News Press |
News and information
Simulating magnetization in a Heisenberg quantum spin chain April 5th, 2024
NRL charters Navy’s quantum inertial navigation path to reduce drift April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Nanomedicine
New micromaterial releases nanoparticles that selectively destroy cancer cells April 5th, 2024
Good as gold - improving infectious disease testing with gold nanoparticles April 5th, 2024
Researchers develop artificial building blocks of life March 8th, 2024
Discoveries
Chemical reactions can scramble quantum information as well as black holes April 5th, 2024
New micromaterial releases nanoparticles that selectively destroy cancer cells April 5th, 2024
Utilizing palladium for addressing contact issues of buried oxide thin film transistors April 5th, 2024
Announcements
NRL charters Navy’s quantum inertial navigation path to reduce drift April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Photonics/Optics/Lasers
With VECSELs towards the quantum internet Fraunhofer: IAF achieves record output power with VECSEL for quantum frequency converters April 5th, 2024
Nanoscale CL thermometry with lanthanide-doped heavy-metal oxide in TEM March 8th, 2024
Optically trapped quantum droplets of light can bind together to form macroscopic complexes March 8th, 2024
HKUST researchers develop new integration technique for efficient coupling of III-V and silicon February 16th, 2024
The latest news from around the world, FREE | ||
Premium Products | ||
Only the news you want to read!
Learn More |
||
Full-service, expert consulting
Learn More |
||