Researchers at McMaster University and SQI Diagnostics have created a surface that repels every element of human blood except Interleukin-6 (IL-6), whose concentrations can offer vital information about a patient's level and stage of infection with COVID-19. Existing technology has not been accurate or sensitive enough to measure concentrations of IL-6 well enough to be reliable, especially in low concentrations.
The McMaster researchers are now working to adapt the technology to the Toronto company's existing testing platforms, in the hope of moving it into clinical use as soon as possible. The same biosensing technology can also be used to measure other infectious and non-infectious diseases, including some cancers.
The innovative surface coating is made to repel every component of blood and other complex fluids such as urine, but is dotted with microscopic islands of molecules that attract IL-6, making it possible to detect and measure IL-6 with accuracy and sensitivity, at concentrations as low as 0.5 picograms per mL, making it more sensitive than existing technology.
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It is the latest application of smart-surface technology to emerge from the laboratory of Tohid Didar, a mechanical engineering professor at McMaster. "There are so many possibilities for these smart surfaces. We can create them to repel everything, or we can design them to interact in many beneficial ways," Didar says. "Here, we're looking for something, and only that one thing, and this allows us to separate it from everything else in a very complex environment."
The new smart surface for detecting IL-6 can be printed inexpensively onto the inside of test tubes and onto other platforms used in diagnostic testing. After a sample of blood is exposed to the surface and removed, the captured IL-6 can readily be measured.
"The technology was challenging to create, but it is easy to use in many applications, including in testing kits that already exist," says Amid Shakeri, co-author of a paper published in Small today.