Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H) Researchers are collaborating with research institutions across the world to develop a device to detect heart disease with high speed, sensitivity and reliability.

Their ground-breaking work has recently been published in the reputed peer-reviewed Journal of Materials Chemistry B.
This Research was a joint effort between IIT Hyderabad Researchers led by Prof. Renu John and Prof. B.D Malhotra, Delhi Technological University collaborating with Researchers from IIT Kanpur, Zoological survey of India & Iowa State University, U.S.

Their work not only offers promise in the diagnosis or prediction of heart disorders within minutes but can also be extended to detection of other diseases, Hyderabad-based Institute said in a release in Hyderabad on 19th August. The clinical complications of Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) are presently major causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Primary and specialist health providers use a variety of tools for both clinical assessment of existing heart diseases and to identify vulnerable patients at risk for CVD. Biosensors are one such tools.

Prof. Renu John’s studies on microfluidics would help in building biomarker-based biosensors that could be used for instantaneous detection of heart attack and other cardiac diseases. Elaborating on this collaborative multi-institutional Research, he said, “Biomarkers are biological molecules that represent health and disease states. Biosensors are devices that combine the sensing element (e.g. antibody) with a transducer that converts the interaction of antibody into electrical or optical signal that can be measured.

Conventional biosensing includes such techniques as ELISA, chemiluminescent immunoassay and radioimmunoassay.