On April 4, a research group consisting of Assistant Professor Tatsuro Goda and Professor Yuji Miyahara in the field of bioelectronics, Institute of Biomaterials and Dentistry, Tokyo Institute of Biomaterials and Professor Shoji Yamaoka of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, selected the human influenza virus. Announced that it has developed a new conductive polymer to capture.
Influenza is said to infect 300 to 500 million people and kill 25 to 50 people worldwide each year.In order to prevent the spread of infection, it is necessary to prescribe drugs at an early stage and to determine the type of virus quickly and accurately.However, virus detection has problems of sensitivity, time, and cost.In addition, there was an infrastructure problem that diagnosis could not be made without going to the hospital, which was insufficient to prevent the spread of influenza.
Therefore, the research group is working on the development of functional materials to realize a compact and portable electric influenza virus detection method that is highly sensitive, highly accurate, and can be diagnosed on the spot (point of care). is.As a result, when a conductive polymer incorporating a sugar chain sequence recognized by influenza A virus (H1N1) was newly synthesized and modified on the surface of various sensors, only the virus of the desired type was selectively bound. It was confirmed.Furthermore, it was found that the virus detection sensitivity of the electrical measurement method was 100 times higher than that of the conventional immunization method.
Conductive polymers incorporating sugar chain sequences are new materials that have never been seen before.If a wearable sensor integrated with a mask can be developed based on this, drug prescription will be effective by realizing early diagnosis of influenza, which will lead to prevention of the spread of infection.In addition, if a portable detector is used, it is possible to prevent secondary infections by inspecting infected patients at home away from the crowd.
