New project aims to develop technologies for quantifying cancer and viral biomarkers
Liquid biopsy, the detection of circulating disease biomarkers in bodily fluids such as blood, is a non-invasive method, alternative to tissue removal, which has taken important strides toward the implementation of personalized medicine, especially in the case of tumors and RNA-viruses. However, the method still suffers from low sensitivity and is highly expensive, which renders its clinical implementation not practical or affordable.
The aim of ANFIBIO (AmplificatioN Free Identification of cancer and viral biomarkers via plasmonic nanoparticles and liquid BIOpsy) - a project coordinated by professor Laura Fabris of the Department of applied science and technology at the Politecnico di Torino - is to make this method more precise and less expensive, through the use of gold nanoparticles with intrinsic amplification capability for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy.