NanoSight Pro
Early detection of illnesses including cancers and infectious diseases like COVID-19 enables us to prioritise critical care for those most at risk. Easy, point-of-care monitoring and diagnosis help reduce community spread and strengthen public health measures. Revenue generated from the point-of-care diagnostics market reached $45.4 billion in 2022, is growing at a CAGR of 10.7%, and is expected to reach $75.5 billion by 20271. At MIP Discovery in Bedford, UK, Research Scientist Oliver Huseyin and his colleagues are using Malvern Panalytical technologies including the new NanoSight Pro Nanoparticle Tracking Analyzer to develop innovative alternatives to biosensor-based testing devices, with Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) at their core.

NanoMIPs are ‘smart’ polymers, often around 40 nm – 50 nm in size, created to specifically target proteins, peptides, and small molecules of interest, including viral particles, antigens on the surface of tumour cells, or markers for particular conditions including heart failure. As MIP Discovery moves into Cell & Gene Therapy applications, these biosensors will help improve the quality of advanced therapies, further demonstrating their utility. Biosensors currently contained in traditional diagnostic devices require a constant supply of effective antibodies – often hampered by time, cost, instability, and often ethical considerations. MIP Discovery is leaving behind biological systems and using polymer chemistry to build synthetic sensor molecules for use in innovative new diagnostic devices. This should also help enable continuous biosensors deployed over a number of hours or days.

The MIP Discovery Team meets the NanoSight Pro A key challenge for the MIP Discovery team is measuring the size of the nanoMIPs they are developing – this is where the NanoSight Pro comes in.

The NanoSight Pro has delivered many advantages to the team. These benefits relate to the robustness of the hardware, and the alignment of the instrument’s software with that of their other key Malvern Panalytical instrument, the Zetasizer. The similarities between the two mean that users can transfer easily between both systems, saving time and expanding the skillset of the team.

In addition, Oliver was positively surprised by the ease of delivery, installation and first measurements, all enabled by the Malvern Panalytical Self-Install Program. The team has seen a dramatic uplift in the speed of results analysis with the NanoSight Pro – this time-consuming work has been reduced up to tenfold, freeing up valuable scientist time and enabling more hands-on time at
the lab bench.

“The NanoSight Pro is quick, easy to use, and gives us the guidance we need to make sure that we’re getting the right results first time. This also means we’re wasting less sample because we don’t have to play around with concentrations and get the right thing after 5 or 6 runs – it’s right the first time we measure it.” Oliver Huseyin, Research Scientist, MIP Discovery, Bedford, UK.

1. www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/point-of-care-diagnostic-market-106829185.html