Nanobiochips will become the basis of medicine of the future
Molecule Catchers
Alexey Khadaev, Rossiyskaya Gazeta – Federal Issue, 20.04.2011
Today, scientists around the world are participating in the ambitious Human Proteome program, which is a continuation of the famous Human Genome.
As you know, a person has 28 thousand genes and they are all decoded. But at the same time, our body contains 4.5 million different types of proteins. They regulate the functions of various organs, and failures in their work lead to diseases. The goal of the Human Proteome program is to decipher, correlate with genes and determine the functions of all these proteins! The task, frankly speaking, is grandiose. It's not just a huge amount of protein. Their concentration in the body is minimal.
Specialists of the Institute of Semiconductor Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Institute of Biomedical Chemistry (IBMH) of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences have developed nanotransistor-based biochips that can be the key to solving the problem of the "Human Proteome".
Biochips are miniature sensors that are able to detect vanishing small concentrations of a particular protein, hormone, DNA or RNA. The father of the biochip is the director of the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Andrey Mirzabekov. Today, these devices based on enzyme immunoassay are used in medicine. But the method is quite time-consuming, since it is associated with the use of dyes, which hinders its widespread use.
The development of Siberian and Moscow scientists is the next step in this scientific field. They have created nanobiochips, which have a completely different detection principle – electronic. The sensor itself, processors, memory – all this can be placed in one silicon crystal. Immediately it becomes possible to process information coming through tens of thousands of channels in parallel. This is a real breakthrough compared to the current biochemical biochips.
In addition, nanobiochips have record sensitivity at the level of femtomole (10 to minus 15 degrees) concentrations due to the fact that a transistor in the form of a wire with a diameter of 10 nanometers is used as a sensor.
Another advantage of the new devices is that a large number of sensors tuned to different molecules can be assembled in one cell. An electronic switchboard capable of taking information from thousands of nanowires at the same time is being developed at the IFP!
– Our biochip simultaneously diagnoses 12 types of diseases, including oncological ones, when it is still impossible to recognize cancer at an early stage in other ways, – says Yuri Ivanov, head of the Laboratory of nanobiotechnology at IBMH.
IFP scientists have shown that nanowires retain the ability to restore their properties for at least 2 years. This is quite enough, since the shelf life of freeze-dried test systems usually does not exceed a year. Such nanobiochips can be implanted in patients with chronic diseases, for example, diabetes. It can also be used as rapid tests, for example, for early diagnosis of malignant tumors or dangerous viral diseases. However, disposable sensors are better suited for rapid analysis.
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