Biological testing tool, ScanDrop, tests in fraction of time and cost of industry standard

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Northeastern University professor of pharmaceutical sciences, Tania Konry, has developed a single instrument that can conduct a wide range of biological scans in a fraction of the time and cost of industry standard equipment. That’s because it uses considerably less material and ultra-sensitive detection methods to do the same thing.Currently, researchers face enormous time constraints and financial hurdles from having to run these analyses on a regular basis. Hundreds of dollars and 24 hours are what’s required to scan biological materials for important biomarkers that signal diseases such as diabetes or cancer. And suppose you wanted to monitor live cancer cells. For that you’d have to use an entirely different method. It takes just as long but requires a whole other set of expensive top-end instrumentation. Want to look at bacteria instead? Be prepared to wait a few days for it to grow before you can get a meaningful result.Konry’s creation, ScanDrop, is a portable instrument no bigger than a shoebox that has the capacity to detect a variety of biological specimen. For that reason it will benefit a wide range of users beyond the medical community, including environmental monitoring and basic scientific research.The instrument acts as a miniature science lab, of sorts. It contains a tiny chip, made of polymer or glass, that is connected to equally tiny tubes. …


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