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Announcements - Optical telecom chips to power biomedical research
February 5, 2010 — Ottawa, Ontario
NRC scientists are adapting silicon chips used in modern optical telecommunications networks into a new role — as sensitive, molecular biosensors to detect disease pathogens and identify promising new drugs.
NRC anticipates using the silicon-based sensors to, among other things, test antibody-antigen interactions, detect biomarkers that warn of cancer or recent heart attacks, and detect sections of DNA molecules that fingerprint, for example, drug-resistant "hospital super bugs" or food-poisoning bacteria.
The sensors may also help pharmaceutical researchers develop more affordable drugs — and more quickly. The current process involves testing huge banks of potential drug molecules by observing the performance of each molecule in hundreds or thousands of parallel interactions to see which ones show promise. Better sensors would speed things significantly.
Researchers at the NRC Institute for Microstructural Sciences (NRC-IMS) in Ottawa are working on the project with other NRC experts under the umbrella of the NRC Genomics and Health Initiative.
