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A devicethat uses nanotechnology to indicate a person’s physical health and fitness isset to help improve UK athletes’ performance.
The portable device can use rapid diagnostic nanotechnology to analyse a small sample of blood, urine or salvia and give an elite athlete full diagnosis of their physical health within minutes. This could help to develop training programmes for individual elite athletes.
The device can also provide real time data for training and identify injuries or medical conditions. This enables rapid treatment before long-term damage can be done, while increasing an athlete’s recovery time.
Argento Diagnostics, a spin out company of the National Physical Laboratory, has developed the system.
Before, during and after training sessions, athletes can use Argento’s device to monitor various proteins that reveal details about their body condition, called biomarkers. These biomarkers can clearly indicate the athlete’s physical health and how effective a particular training programme will be for them. The aim is to help improve their performance out in the field and avoid injury, which is particularly important for elite level athletes, where small changes in fitness can mean the difference between winning and losing.
Biomarker tests are currently carried out at centralised laboratories, but sending out samples and receiving results can take time. Argento’s handheld device solves this problem by providing results almost instantly.
The device’s nanotechnology works by mixing the single sample, taken from the athlete, with silver nanoparticles. These are coated with a binding unit, an antibody, against a specific biological compound, the biomarker, which is indicative of the condition being tested for. If the biomarker is present the silver nanoparticles will stick to magnetic beads with the biomarkers sandwiched inbetween.
Magnets pull these compounds into the measurement zone, where the silver nanoparticles are dislodged off, drawn down to a sensor and measured. The number of nanoparticles measured by the sensor will be directly proportional to the expressed amount of biomarker.This means the device can quicklyanalyse the biomarker level and, using a computer programme, summarise it in ameaningful way.
UK Sport, Britain’s high performance sports agency, will be the first organisation to use the technology, giving leading British athletes access to the device.
Keith Page, chief executive of Argento Diagnostics,said: “The deal with UK Sport will allow a dramatically increased understanding of how the human body works when being pushed to its limit and we can use that information to continue to improve physical performance. This is a great example of the UK’s world-leading science expertise supporting our world-leading sportsmen and women.”
The device could also save lives by providing rapid diagnosis of a wide range of medical conditions, including cardiac damage and swine flu. This will allow such conditions to be treated quicker. It could also be used in bio-defence and environmental applications.
Argento is in talks with several organisations about using the technology in these areas.