IIT-Hyderabad team works on device to detect heart diseases

Hyderabad: Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad are collaborating with research institutions across the world to develop a sensor device to detect heart disease with high speed, sensitivity and reliability. According to an institution press release, their ground-breaking work has recently been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Materials Chemistry B. The work not only offers promise in the diagnosis or prediction of heart disorders within minutes but can also be extended to detection of other diseases, it said.

Renu John, head of the research team, said Biomarkers, biological molecules that represent health and disease states, are specific chemicals that are released in the body in response to certain physiological conditions. Cardiac troponins or cTns, for example, are biomarkers of heart diseases and are conventionally detected in the blood stream using antibodies that bind specifically to them.

"Biosensors are devices that combine the sensing element (e.g. antibody) with a transducer that converts the interaction of antibody into electrical or optical signal that can be measured. Conventional biosensing includes such techniques as ELISA, chemiluminescent immunoassay and radioimmunoassay," he said. Renu John and his team tested the performance of the microfluidic biosensors using blood serum of cardiac patients and compared the results with those of conventional chemiluminescence assays.