Researchers from the Department of Applied Physics and Interdisciplinary Division of Biomedical Engineering at PolyU have worked together to develop a novel nanobiosensor that uses upconversion luminescence resonance energy transfer (LRET) in the rapid detection of influenza viruses.
Influenza, a common and contagious respiratory disease caused by a group of viruses, is one of the more serious public health threats around the world. You might think that the common flu is just a small, if inconvenient, part of modern life and that large pandemics are a much greater cause for concern. But consider this: in the first two months of 2015, over 300 people died from a particularly virulent flu outbreak in Hong Kong, more than the total SARS deaths in the city during the dark days of 2003.
Combined with the cost and trauma of hospitalisation for survivors, these deaths should make it abundantly clear that influenza is of great concern in Hong Kong. There is a very urgent need to develop diagnostic methods that are accurate and rapid enough to change the situation, save lives and limit suffering.
The PolyU teams led by Prof. Hao Jianhua, Associate Head at the Department of Applied Physics, and Dr Yang Mo, Associate Professor at the Interdisciplinary Division of Biomedical Engineering, have started along that path by developing the upconversion LRET-powered nanobionsensor for ultrasensitive virus detection. As Prof. Hao put it, “with the sensor’s simple operational procedures, the testing duration for influenza has decreased massively from 1-3 days to 2-3 hours for only HK$20 per sample – far quicker than traditional clinical methods at 80% less cost”.
