Novel Multibiosensors and Biomedical Application

Annually, a lot of patients in Canadian hospitals are contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, resulting in abundant amounts of money spent on the health-care system. Even though most bacteria are risk-free to healthy individuals, the symptoms of bacterial contamination can be severe for patients with a weakened immune system. Early detection is critical for improved patient care and can help in minimizing the risk of cross contamination between patients. This work aims at using state-of-the-art technologies for developing handheld multibiosensors on a single chip for pathogenic bacteria detection. There is extensive demand for a low-cost, rapid, selective and sensitive method for detecting bacteria in medical diagnosis, and food-safety inspection. In this work, we are introducing more than one technique based on a CMOS/MEMS technology batch process for detecting pathogen bacterial cell at a low concentration level. The methodology of the proposed multi-labs-on-a-single-chip system (MLoC) lies on miniaturizing transducers, which is utilizing a sort of technique that has the capability to smooth the progress of point-of-care testing (POCT) and become conscious state-of-the-art molecular analysis independently of the state-of-the-art laboratory. MLoC methodology can be categorized as electrochemical, capacitive and optical, on the light of their sensing theory, incorporated with interdigitated microelectrode array (IDMA).

I. Introduction

By far, the main pathogen detection methods are based on Petri culture; colony counting, Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA); based on antibodies or polymerase chain reaction (PCR); nucleic acid detection using DNA microarray, techniques [1]. The reason for this is the high selectivity and reliability of these techniques, which have different strengths and weaknesses. Culture and colony counting is the oldest method and is the one that is generally considered as the reference. It enables the detection of viable cells, but its downside is that it is labor intensive and takes up to several days to yield results. Biosensors are relatively new players in the pathogen detection arena and their performance is generally limited by the use of biological recognition element. Such recognition elements are mostly antibodies or DNA sequences. While DNA based methods; despite their good selectivity and long-term stability; are unable to discriminate between viable and non-viable cells, antibody based biosensors, on the other hand, may suffer from cross binding of other bacteria, which would result in false positives. In addition, antibodies are generally very expensive to produce.