Personalised medicine is one of the new developments that is deemed to revolutionise health care. A key component is the detection of biomarkers, proteins in blood or saliva, for example, whose presence or abnormal concentration is caused by a disease.

Until now, few biosensors have had the required sensitivity to detect single molecules. A novel approach for improved biosensor sensitivity has opened new avenues for developing new kinds of biosensors.

Gold nanoparticles ( AuNPs ) present the many advantages of displaying relative biocompatibility, high light absorption and strong optical scattering properties. They are therefore good candidates to be used as probes for cancer imaging .

Researchers are trying to find out more about the relationship between different NPs’ shapes, sizes and surface chemistries and how they behave in the human body.