20-06-2025
New Tech Adapted From Solar Cells Could Make Drug Development Faster, Cheaper
From mass spectrometry to thermogravimetric analysis, one of the most expensive and time-consuming tasks in modern chemistry is figuring out what you've got. It turns out that just isolating a sample, or even synthesizing one, is often only half the battle. The other half is proving the identity and concentration of whatever that sample contains—and that's the target of a new innovation from a startup called Advanced Silicon Group.
The tech takes diverse solutions of proteins, even complex solutions with multiple proteins at once, and passes them over a series of silicon nanowires that can bind to certain proteins. They claim that it can identify and quantify an array of different proteins in less than 15 minutes, requires less of the sample solution to work, and provides more accurate results.
Let's talk about how it works.
Both this method of quantifying proteins and traditional ones share the basic type of approach: antibodies. The legacy test, and still the mainstay in modern laboratories, is called ELISA, or Enzyme-linked ImmunoSuppressant Assay. It works by washing liquid mixtures of proteins over a plate coated with antibodies that bind to a specific protein—yet again, using evolved biological molecules to do jobs we still struggle to do, directly.
If you've ever taken a biochemistry lab course, you've likely encountered ELISA test. Credit: GETTY IMAGES
If present, the protein of interest will bind to the specifically chosen antibody and become stuck to the plate, which is then washed again with another antibody that also binds to this same protein. This second antibody attachment comes with a marker, though, which can be activated to become visible. So, the more color, the more of the protein of interest.
The problem is that ELISA requires a fair amount of training and time, and it also requires a fair volume of the solution being tested. The color-based analysis is also only a blunt way of quantifying the signal, meaning that its sensitivity often leaves something to be desired.
It's an old style of chemical test, both literally and figuratively messy and requiring expertise to scry the results. This innovation offers the same path forward as solutions to similar situations in the past, such as DNA sequencing and electrochemistry.
This new tech also works through binding of antibodies, but this time they are bound to silicon nanowires that easily conduct electricity. It's actually an adaptation of a design for a solar photovoltaic cell, and still involves exposure to light; scientists wash their sample solution over the antibody-bound nanowires, and again end up with it bound to antibodies.
The new tech works based on how proteins bound to a nanowire disrupt that nanowire's regular reaction to light. Credit: Advanced Silicon Group
This time, though, the next step is to hit the experiment with light. That's because the protein-bound nanowires will create a current from this light more readily than the non-protein-bound nanowires. This allows researchers to use the strength of the current created to quantify the protein—and because the antibody used was chosen to bind to only the protein of interest, we know that the concentration is of interest.
This level of current allows much more specific results, and ones that can be quantified by a computer, rather than by a chemist. Automation might be controversial in some industries—but most people are in favor of any innovation that leads patients to receive more, better drugs.
'We're making it 15 times faster and 15 times lower cost to test for proteins,' the researchers told MIT News. 'That's on the drug development side. This could also make the manufacturing of drugs significantly faster and more cost-effective. It could revolutionize how we create drugs in this country and around the world.'
The new approach is quicker and much less messy, requiring less training in laboratory processes. Credit: Advanced Silicon Group
Faster, cheaper, better protein sensing would assist scientists in searching for specific proteins in potential sources for new therapies, and in patient fluid samples. On the other hand, it could also help drug manufacturing move much more quickly, and more efficiently hone in on the best methods that create the purest products.
The technology could also be used for direct diagnosis of certain ailments that have protein-based markers for identification; the researchers themselves suggest lung cancer as a potential first target.
Check out all ExtremeTech's coverage of drug development.
