Compact Disc Diagnostics for Early Disease Detection

Robert Dunn and colleagues at the University of Kansas in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic tool for the early detection of disease that employs writable compact discs that can be read in conventional computer disc drives. Microfluidic structures and immobilized antibodies will be fabricated onto small sections of a compact disc, along with enzymes that produce a reflective "silvering" surface upon recognition of target biomarkers. These changes in reflection can be read by any conventional CD drive, allowing for diagnosis using laptops in low resource settings.