Publications by authors named "Olalla Calvo-Lozano"
Article Synopsis
- Water pollution poses serious health and environmental risks, necessitating new sensing technologies for quick detection of contaminants in water.
- Researchers have developed a nanophotonic sensor using metal-organic polyhedra (MOPs) to detect small pollutants, requiring no sample pretreatment and allowing for rapid results in just 15 minutes.
- The sensor has been validated for detecting harmful pollutants like benzotriazole and imidacloprid in tap water at levels below toxic thresholds, paving the way for advanced tools in environmental monitoring.
Article Synopsis
- Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are tiny particles released by cells that carry important biological information and can serve as biomarkers for diseases, such as renal injury in preeclampsia.
- The study presents a new method using nanoparticles and an electrochemical setup to accurately measure specific proteins (podocin and nephrin) on urinary EVs, enabling improved disease diagnosis.
- Results showed that preeclamptic women had a higher podocin to nephrin ratio in their urinary EVs compared to healthy women, indicating this measurement could be useful for diagnosing preeclampsia.
Article Synopsis
- Early cancer diagnosis is vital for improving treatment outcomes, especially for lung cancer, which has high mortality due to late detection.
- A novel nanophotonic biosensor was developed to quickly and accurately detect the lung cancer biomarker microRNA-21-5p directly in human plasma without complex procedures.
- Testing on clinical samples demonstrated the biosensor's effectiveness, matching traditional methods while offering a simpler approach that could enable faster cancer diagnostics in healthcare settings.
Article Synopsis
- Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have the potential to mature into any adult cell type, making them valuable for therapies and disease studies.
- The study focuses on bioactive microcapsules that aid in stem cell aggregation and can deliver growth factors effectively, enhancing stem cell development in a 3D culture.
- The addition of a tannic acid coating to these microcapsules improved growth factor retention and boosted pluripotency expression in the stem cells, indicating a new method for stem cell culture.
Article Synopsis
- Serological tests are crucial for managing COVID-19, focusing on diagnostics, surveillance, and immunity studies.
- A new plasmonic biosensor assay identifies SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in under 15 minutes using a custom-designed sensor, without needing signal amplification.
- Clinical validation shows the biosensor offers high diagnostic sensitivity (99%) and specificity (100%), making it a reliable tool for rapid COVID-19 serology in various settings.
Article Synopsis
- Pneumocystis pneumonia is a serious fungal infection that affects people with weakened immune systems, and diagnosing it is complicated because patients often lack specific symptoms.
- Current diagnostic methods mainly rely on PCR techniques that are effective but require specialized expertise, equipment, and can be time-consuming.
- The study presents a new optical biosensor that uses surface plasmon resonance to quickly and accurately detect the mitochondrial ribosomal RNA gene associated with Pneumocystis pneumonia, offering a potential for faster and more accessible diagnostics in clinical settings.
Article Synopsis
- Nanoplasmonic biosensors typically require complex and costly fabrication methods for effective performance, but this study presents a simpler and cheaper approach using colloidal lithography.
- The researchers created large-area nanoplasmonic sensor chips with nanogap antennas made from pairs of gold nanodisks, achieving a uniform plasmonic response and high sensitivity.
- The sensor chips demonstrated a limit of detection of 0.78 nM for the cancer biomarker miRNA-210, enabling direct and label-free detection of low molecular weight biomolecules without additional amplification steps.
Evanescent-wave optical biosensors have become an attractive alternative for the screening of nucleic acids in the clinical context. They possess highly sensitive transducers able to perform detection of a wide range of nucleic acid-based biomarkers without the need of any label or marker. These optical biosensor platforms are very versatile, allowing the incorporation of an almost limitless range of biorecognition probes precisely and robustly adhered to the sensor surface by covalent surface chemistry approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiosensing of cancer biomarkers enabling early diagnosis of cancer constitutes an essential tool for clinical intervention and application of novel therapies against cancer disease. Optical biosensor instruments as point-of-care (POC) devices and operating under label-free scheme have demonstrated to provide fast, simple, and high-sensitivity assays even at home care environment. Nanoplasmonic biosensors are thought to be a powerful tool for detection of complex analytes of relevant clinical applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSepsis is a condition characterized by a severe stage of blood-infection often leading to tissue damage, organ failure and finally death. Fast diagnosis and identification of the sepsis stage (sepsis, severe sepsis or septic shock) is critical for the patient's evolution and could help in defining the most adequate treatment in order to reduce its mortality. The combined detection of several biomarkers in a timely, specific and simultaneous way could ensure a more accurate diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExisting clinical methods for bacteria detection lack speed, sensitivity, and, importantly, point-of-care (PoC) applicability. Thus, finding ways to push the sensitivity of clinical PoC biosensing technologies is crucial. Here we report a portable PoC device based on lens-free interferometric microscopy (LIM).
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