Scientists from Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and the University of Vigo in Spain has made a technological breakthrough with its development of an ultra-sensitive test with the capacity to detect signs of a disease in its earliest stages.

A team of researchers from Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and the University of Vigo in Spain funded in part by two European Research Council grants and a Marie Curie Action grant under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), NATURALE and PLASMAQUO, has developed a new diagnostic blood test to detect a biomarker called prostate specific antigen (PSA) that is associated with prostate cancer. The Marie Curie call for proposals 2013 are already open.

The study, presented in the journal Nature Materials, shows that monitoring the levels of PSA at ultra-low concentrations is crucially important for early diagnosis, particularly for those patients with prostate cancer reoccurrence. It should be noted that current detection approaches are not sufficiently sensitive to carry out this analysis with a high degree of accuracy. Molly Stevens from the Departments of Materials and Bioengineering at Imperial College London, highlighted that although they only looked at the biomarker for one disease in this study, researches are confident that the test can be adapted to identify many other diseases at an early stage.

The team plans to carry out further clinical testing to assess the efficacy of the biosensor in detecting a range of different biomarkers associated with various diseases, such as AIDS. They will also explore ways of commercialising their product.