An early and accurate diagnosis is the key to the effective and ultimately successful treatment of a large number of diseases, and only sensitive detection methods allow an early diagnosis. Current methods, employed in the clinical area, are often time-consuming, expensive, and require advanced instrumentation and high skilled professionals. Thus, more cost effective methods requiring user-friendly instrumentation that can provide an adequate sensitivity and accuracy would be ideal, and the most important challenge in biosensing is to combine the advances in nanomaterials and molecular biology, with new diagnosis methods in order to overcome the diagnosis difficulties
Electrochemical biosensors can fulfil these requirements once they gather the selective biochemical recognition with the high sensitivity of electrochemical detection plus, they can be easily integrated in fluidic systems that enhance their overall manageability. To improve the electrochemical assay sensitivity and to achieve a better and more reliable analysis there is a great demand for labels with higher specific activity. The most used labels for electrochemical sensors up to date have been enzymes as well as small molecules like electro-active indicators. Nanoparticles can provide a novel platform for improving the specific activity of a label as well as its affinity to the tracer biomolecules (DNA probes, proteins and other biomolecules). They are within the same size range as biomolecules and in solution they present a similar behaviour. Therefore they can be used as electrochemical labels allowing more assay-flexibility, faster binding kinetics, high sensitivity and high reaction rates for many types of assays, ranging from protein immunoassays to DNA and cell analysis.
The main objective of this thesis is the development of novel and improved electrochemical sensing systems for biomarker detection, using the electrocatalytic effects of nanoparticles. Several approaches were developed using gold nanoparticles as electrocatalytic labels in immunosensor and cell sensing systems, for the detection of proteins and cells with interest for the detection of biomarkers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TDX_UAB/oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/96695 |
| Date | 04 May 2012 |
| Creators | Maltez da Costa, Marisa |
| Contributors | Merkoçi, Arben, Escosura Muñiz, Alfredo de la, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular |
| Publisher | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Source Sets | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
| Format | 229 p., application/pdf |
| Source | TDX (Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa) |
| Rights | ADVERTIMENT. L'accés als continguts d'aquesta tesi doctoral i la seva utilització ha de respectar els drets de la persona autora. Pot ser utilitzada per a consulta o estudi personal, així com en activitats o materials d'investigació i docència en els termes establerts a l'art. 32 del Text Refós de la Llei de Propietat Intel·lectual (RDL 1/1996). Per altres utilitzacions es requereix l'autorització prèvia i expressa de la persona autora. En qualsevol cas, en la utilització dels seus continguts caldrà indicar de forma clara el nom i cognoms de la persona autora i el títol de la tesi doctoral. No s'autoritza la seva reproducció o altres formes d'explotació efectuades amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva comunicació pública des d'un lloc aliè al servei TDX. Tampoc s'autoritza la presentació del seu contingut en una finestra o marc aliè a TDX (framing). Aquesta reserva de drets afecta tant als continguts de la tesi com als seus resums i índexs., info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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