One of the Holy Grails of biomedical research has been the advancement of new technology that would allow physicians to monitor patients for biomarkers of disease. Now researchers in Scotland say they have developed gold nanosensors that can detect thrombin, a red flag for blood clots, in blood samples. And they say that one day the same nanosensors could be injected directly into patients, enabling them to measure protein concentrations through the use of a laser light, according to a new report in MIT Technology Review.

"The gold particle works likes a kind of transducer for the laser," University of Edinburgh chemist Colin Campbell tells the publication. His team measured levels of the target molecule by evaluating spectral changes. And while the initial target is thrombin, the same technology has the potential to do the same for a number of disease-causing proteins.

"You could actually locate in a cell what is happening at a particular time point in a viral infection," says Michael Ochsenkuehn, another chemist at the University of Edinburgh.

- here's the article from MIT Technology Review

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