SiDx's use of silicon photonics for blood testing

Part 4: Biosensor start-up, SiDx

A blood sample reveals much about a person’s health. But analysing the sample is complicated given its many constituents.

Identifying a user’s blood type is also non-trivial.

If a patient arriving at hospital needs a blood transfusion, the universal donor blood type, O negative, is administered. That’s because it takes too long - 45 minutes typically - to identify the patient’s blood type. This also explains the huge demand for O negative blood.

A laser lights the waveguide causing the ring to resonate. The blood sample then flows over the ring causing constituents to bind to the receptors. A rinse stage then removes specific bound components leaving the target constituent that has a signature wavelength shift. Source: SiDx.

Identifying blood type promptly is what start-up SiDx set out to address with a platform based on a silicon photonics sensor. The resulting platform does more than just blood-type identification.

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The growing role of biosensors

Part 2: Professor Laura Lechuga, biosensor pioneer 

Professor Lechuga, a leading biosensor researcher, explains the challenges involved in developing medical biosensors and why, due to covid, the technology's time has come.  

Professor LechugaLaura Lechuga is a multideciplinarian. She read chemistry at university, did a doctorate in physics while her postdoctoral research was in electrical engineering. She has even worked in a cleanroom, making chips.

Group leader at the NanoBiosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), Lechuga thus has an ideal background for biosensor research.

Biosensors are used for health, environmental, food control, veterinary and agriculture applications. They are used to test for chemical substances and comprise a biological element and an optical sensor.

Her initial focus was environmental biosensors but she quickly switched to medical devices, partly because of the great interest healthcare generates.

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