NEW DELHI: Indian researchers have developed a sensor that will aid in tracking disease progression and providing rapid medical support. The sensor targets cytokines, an inflammatory biomarker used for disease diagnosis and understanding disease progression.
This technique, developed by researchers from IIT Jodhpur, is crucial for developing therapeutics for conditions like multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, among others. The overall time required for analysis is less than 30 minutes, making it a quick diagnostic tool and a rapid point-of-care technique for patients.
Researchers said that this development aims to reduce mortality rates due to delayed diagnosis and lack of early warnings. “The technology has immense potential to be used as a rapid and point-of-care technique for health monitoring, disease diagnosis, prognosis, and immune response tracking,” researchers added.
Cytokines are among the many biomarkers of inflammation used for diagnosing diseases and tracking their progression. They play crucial roles in tissue damage repair, cancer development and progression, and modulating immune reactions. They are vital for developing precision medicine and targeted therapeutics for various conditions such as oncology, infectiology, and rheumatological diseases.
Prof. Ajay Agarwal, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Jodhpur, said, “This technique has provided encouraging results for three key pro-inflammatory cytokines: interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin- β (IL-β), and TNF-α, released by inflammatory cells.”
As of now, the testing is done for controlled samples, but the team aims to take the technology to clinical trials soon. The group is also using it to develop detection protocols for the early-stage and quick diagnosis of sepsis and fungal infections.
This novel sensor uses Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy to detect analytes even at low concentrations. It is based on semiconductor process technology and works on the principle of Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering.
This makes the technique powerful and capable of detecting trace-level molecules with high precision and selectivity. The most widely used techniques currently for cytokine detection are enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). These methods are reliable but highly time-consuming. However, the sensor developed by IIT Jodhpur takes only 30 minutes in comparison and is also cost-effective, the researchers added.