Graphene based biosensors for detection of blood biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease
Research student: Jagriti Sethi
Course: MPhil/PhD in Computing and Electronics
Funding: EU Marie Curie (BBDIAG)
Start date: 1 October, 2017
Supervisors:
Professor Genhua Pan
(Director of Studies) and
Professor Yinghui Wei
Project description:
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the major forms of dementia affecting millions of people worldwide. Preclinical diagnosis of AD, before significant brain damage, is a key requirement for developing disease-modifying drugs and preventive strategies. Under the
Blood Biomarker-based diagnosis tools for early stage Alzheimer’s disease (BBDiag)
, our aim is to develop novel and innovative diagnostic strategies for the detection of biomarkers.
Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon consisting of monolayer of atoms arranged in a honey-comb lattice. It is an attractive material for biosensors due to its amazing properties such as mechanical strength, large surface to volume ratio, chemically inert surface, high electron mobility, thermal conductivity, large scale CVD production, ease of surface functionalisation and low intrinsic electrical noise. Additionally, graphene sensors can also be easily integrated into a POC technology for high throughput screening of biological samples (plasma, serum etc). This ensures miniaturization of the system and promotes automation and parallelization for a multiplexed platform.