Sometimes, despite the doctors’ best efforts, the transplanted lung begins to malfunction in the recipient’s body. This disorder, called primary graft dysfunction, is the leading cause of death for patients in the immediate aftermath of surgery.
The new sensor can predict, before transplantation, which donated lungs will malfunction. Biomedical engineer Shana Kelley and her colleagues at the University of Toronto created a tiny electrochemical device that detects several biomarkers associated with graft dysfunction, and can do so within half an hour. The researchers describe the experimental device in the journal Science.
via IEEE Spectrum
Props to http://www.kelleylaboratory.com/ (Shana Kelley and others) for making IL-6 and other factor-binding DNA sensors on gold clusters. It appears you pop this into the biopsy of or whole candidate lung and get back your bad meat signals (plus your licensed panel of certiori) in 30 minutes, saving tossing something for looking at you funny or smelling like the town it’s from, and giving you an more honest bill for what you didn’t transplant in.
Saves all that stitching them into Docker containers, calling nohup and test-jogging them. Oh! CC-BY-NC article in the photogenic Science Advances (Declines by paywall only)
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/7/e1500417