Technology for early detection of viruses
Date: 8.11.2007
Iowa State University researchers have developed a technology that detects a single molecule of the virus associated with **cervical cancer** in women.
That's a significant improvement over the current test for the **human papillomavirus**, said Edward Yeung, an Iowa State Distinguished Professor and the Robert Allen Wright Chair in Chemistry who led the research team that developed the new test. The current test, the Nobel Prize-winning polymerase chain reaction technique, requires 10 to 50 virus molecules for detection.
"We are always interested in detecting smaller and smaller amounts of material at lower and lower concentrations," Yeung said. "Detecting lower levels means earlier diagnosis."
#img_767#.<>
The discovery by Yeung, who's also a senior chemist and deputy program director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory at Iowa State; Jiangwei Li, an Iowa State doctoral student; and Ji-Young Lee, a former Iowa State doctoral student; will be published in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.
Whole article on "www.iastate.edu":[ http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2007/oct/detect.shtml]
