SYDNEY, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in Australia have developed a rapid saliva test that could revolutionize heart failure detection, promising to make heart failure screening more accessible, especially in remote and under-resourced communities.
Scientists from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence in Synthetic Biology have developed a biosensor that can rapidly detect the heart failure biomarker S100A7 in saliva, the center said in a statement on Wednesday.
Heart failure affects 64 million people worldwide, but current diagnostics, such as blood tests, clinical evaluations, and imaging technologies, are often expensive and geographically inaccessible, leading to delayed diagnoses when treatment options become limited.
"Early symptoms are often subtle and non-specific, meaning patients typically receive treatment only in advanced disease stages," said the study's first author Roxane Mutschler of the center at Australia's Queensland University of Technology.
The biomarker S100A7 was discovered by Professor Chamindie Punyadeera's team at Griffith University. Instead of using the body's natural antibodies to detect problems, researchers used a technique called mRNA display to custom-build their own protein detectors from scratch. They created millions of different versions and let them compete to see which ones best latched onto the heart failure marker. The winning designs were then produced in bacteria, researchers said.
Healthy people typically have lower levels of S100A7 in their saliva, while heart failure patients have roughly twice as much, researchers said, adding the test can detect this difference reliably, and will alleviate the pressure on centralized testing laboratories or hospitals.
This synthetic biology approach was faster and cheaper than traditional methods, and the same technique can be used to detect different diseases by simply changing the target biomarker, according to the study. ■
