University of Queensland Teams up with USA Experts to Detect Diseases

Professor Matt Trau, Director of University of Queensland's Centre for Nanotechnology and Biomaterials, is heading up an international project that aims to investigate and test a set of unique, Australian-owned nanotechnologies that will accelerate advances in the early detection and diagnosis of many diseases.

"By testing and developing these nanotechnology platforms we hope to produce tools to give people an early warning that they have a serious disease." Professor Trau said.

"That early warning could mean the difference of getting medical intervention at a time when it is easy to administer and highly effective, or facing the prospect of massive and debilitating intervention when the disease has taken hold.

"There are currently few tools available for early diagnosis at the molecular level. And those that are available are difficult to use and cover only a small fraction of known diseases.

Nanotechnology offers the possibility to create devices which can screen for disease biomarkers at very fast rates. The tools will be developed by identifying biomarkers for particular diseases that can then lead to diagnostic tests.

Once biomarkers are found, we can assess them for clinical use,"  Potentially hundreds of biomarkers could be found, paving the way for the development of many new diagnostic tests." he said.

This research draws together the expertise of a team of researchers from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at The University of Queensland, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre (USA), the University of Washington (USA) and the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.

This project is supported by a contribution of $2 million from the Queensland State Government through the National and International Research Alliances Program. In addition to Alliances funding, the project will receive support from the participating institutes and UQ spin-off company Nanomics Biosystems Pty Ltd.