An ultrasensitive molecularly-imprinted human cardiac troponin sensor
This paper touches on two thing of current interest to me: Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and troponin detection. Tropinin detection has been identified as a useful biomarker for a chip based blood analyzer. Tropinin is a plasma biomarker that correlates strongly with a recent heart attack. EIS is a technique we’ve heard about in the context of barrier tissue assays in past discussions led by Greg or Tejas. There is a company in Albany called Applied Biophysics that applies the technique (called ECIS there) as a much more expensive alternative to transwell TEER assays. The paper also introduces the concept of molecular imprinting as shown in the figure below. I have a hard time accepting the validity of this technique but I think it is because it reminds me of the nonsense concept of ‘water memory‘ as published in Nature in 1998. If I can get over this bias, perhaps molecular imprinting will serve some purpose for us.
