NANO
PROBEIS
Dr. Chad Mirkin has a singularly
impressive résumé — he is the
director of the International Institute
for Nanotechnology, and serves as
a professor of chemistry, medicine,
biomedical engineering, materials
science engineering, and chemical
and biological engineering at
Northwestern University. In 2008,
he was recognized as the third-
most cited chemist and the most
cited nanomedicine researcher in
the world. In April of this year he
was named as a member of Barack
Obama‘s Science and Technology
Advisory Council.
Mirkin is perhaps best known for the
development of a technique known as dip pen
nanolithography, a method of nanopatterning
that uses an atomic force microscope much like
a quill pen to deposit a molecular “ink” onto a
substrate. His contributions to medical diagnostics
and therapeutics are a bit more obscure. The
diagnostic assays developed in his lab
use chemically-functionalized
gold nanoparticles
PEOPLE
100 YEARS
FROM NOW WILL
SAY, “THESE
THESE GUYS WERE
IN THE STONE AGE.”
” the target and tell you how much is present. And so
as a probe to detect targeted DNA sequences, as
well as the presence of proteins that can indicate
disease. The applications of this technique range
over a broad spectrum, including everything from
detecting the flu virus, to accurately diagnosing
Alzheimer‘s, to finding the protein markers that
can indicate cancer.
Recently, his bio-barcode assay was
integrated into a device that uses blood serum
passing through microfluidic channels to allow
the assay to take place without assistance. This
kind of system may soon lead to handheld devices
capable of diagnosing a wide range of disease in
minutes, using only a small sample of blood.
Dr. Mirkin spoke with h+ via telephone to
discuss some of implications of this technology.
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. CHAD MIRKIN
h+: Can you talk about the diagnostic assays
that you have developed?
CHAD MIRKIN: In the diagnostics area, we‘re using
nanoparticles made of gold that have DNA strands
attached to them. They can be used to latch onto
disease targets with specific DNA codes that then
provide some sort of colorimetric signal that tell us
that that particular target is present, and how much
is present. And those are commercial systems
now. There is a whole diagnostic system called the
Verigene system which is sold by Nanosphere, a
public company that we started about 10 years
ago. There are now four FDA clearances and
hopefully many more on the way.
h+: Can you tell me a little bit about how the
bio-barcode assay works with lab-on-a-chip
technology?
CM: Well, that is not a commercial assay yet...
it‘s a research assay. But it is an assay that is
extraordinarily sensitive—it allows you to detect
protein markers at orders of magnitude lower
concentration than you can with conventional
commercial diagnostic tools. And as a result it‘s
opening up all sorts of applications in oncology
research and medical diagnostics, but also in the
testing of things like Alzheimer‘s disease and HIV.
Anything where a high sensitivity and low marker
concentration is critical, this type of technology can
have a major impact. The microfluidic part of that
is developing a system that is highly miniaturized,
and can take a sample and basically treat that
sample with chemical reagents on a little microchip
that presents it in the form that you can detect the
different disease markers of interest. So DNA
does not come packaged as something
that is freely floating in blood. It‘s inside
cells, and cells have to be lysed. The DNA
has to be broken apart. It‘s a duplex structure. And
then you have to have a system that can capture
the microfluidic bio-barcode assay actually does
that from beginning to end and creates a device
that truly can be a portable, point-of-care device.
It certainly could be used in hospitals, but likely
also in the doctor‘s office and maybe even the
home. That‘s the goal of all this. Bill Gates wanted
a computer on every desktop and he actually got
two in many cases. We‘d like a medical diagnostic
system in every home in the world.
RESOURCES
Nanosphere
http://www.nanosphere.us
IAN MONROE
h+: What kinds of tests do you imagine these
devices will be capable of performing? I know
you‘ve been working with prostate cancer
protein markers….
CM: Well, everything! Every disease where there is
a marker present we can have an impact because
our assays are more selective. And they‘re more
sensitive than what‘s out there. They‘re also lower
cost and they have been designed so that they can
be run off of relatively simple instrumentation. And
that means you no longer have to rely on these
remote labs with this big bulky instrumentation that
has to be in a stationary state and where samples
have to be sent. This really opens up the whole
field of point of care diagnostics.
h+: How far out do you think we are from
seeing these sorts of point-of-care diagnostic
systems readily available for standard
practice in the First World?
CM: They‘re here. The Verigene system is
launched. It‘s in hospitals around the country. It
will scale rapidly. Really, what we are waiting for
is just an increasing menu [of tests]. Because the
beauty is that with one instrument you can have
almost an infinite number of assays, just different
cartridges.
h+: It sounds like science fiction.
CM: To me, it‘s amazing that it hasn‘t happened
before. People 100 years from now will say,
“These guys were in the Stone Age. I can‘t believe
they had to send a sample of blood, saliva
or urine to an outside lab and then
wait days to weeks to get the test
results.” The type of technology
should—and now does— exist
to do it at the point of care, to
do it in this case in a couple of
hours. But I think one day it will
be a few minutes.
Ian Monroe is a journalist and
technology geek currently living
in Chicago. He‘s on the web at
ianmonroe.com
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