Promoting University Academic Excellence and Caring Society: NTU’s Multidisciplinary Team Detects Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia by the Nanotechnology Spectroscopy

Virus detection has long been viewed as the very fundamental examination for the medical treatment of severe diseases. However, in the past, it usually took two to five days to complete the detection procedure, which made the patients suffer from the possibility and the fear of death. Recently, the multidisciplinary team led by Professor Wang Yuh-Lin of NTU Department of Physics and of National Science Council has just made an outstanding breakthrough by presenting the great invention of an innovative medical detection. Professor Wang and his team have just found out the way to inspect the virus within only thirty minutes by using the nanotechnology spectroscopy. It is expected that the new approach and the invention will definitely help cure the disease with an excellent efficiency, avoid abusing medicine, and reduce possible complications.

Such a great achievement has just been published in the world-known, international journal, Nature Communications, on November 15th, 2011. The innovative technology combined with the effective detection chip, which captures and detects the virus right straightaway from blood specimen, can definitely help doctors quickly reach the decision of how to use antibiotics effectively in a very short time along with the quick recognition of the certain virus by detecting the spectroscopy. Also, it helps a lot tell whether the certain virus medical-preventive or not. It is expected that it will surely overcome the difficult tasks of dealing with super virus. This great innovation has just been reported on the international press of the nanotechnology website, Nanowerk.

This outstanding invention is one of the research results made by the multidisciplinary team led by Professor Wang Yuh-Lin of NTU Department of Physics and of National Science Council. The first author of this research paper is Professor Liu Ting-Yu of the NTU Institute of Polymer Science.

The first author of this research paper, Professor Liu Ting-Yu, explained that this invention fully makes a use of the SERS technique (Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy) as the fundamental method to design the effective detection chip, which captures and detects the virus right straightaway from blood specimen. Such a detection chip is highly sensitive, making it possible to receive the virus’ spectroscopy for urgent medical examination. Thus, it is expected that doctors can detect and inspect the virus out from the patients who suffer from viral hemorrhagic septicemia within only thirty minutes, much shorter than the conventional medical procedures, which used to take two to five days to complete the whole. Such an innovative nanotechnology will definitely help doctor quickly reach the decision of how to use antibiotics and reduce the medicine abuse for the urgent cases in a much more effective way.

Furthermore, Professor Liu Ting-Yu points out that the detection chip, which captures and detects the virus right straightaway from blood specimen, is an innovative technique of nanotechnology. This technique gave the doctors and the scientists an alternative medical and clinical approach to capture the bacteria in the blood specimen of the patients and thus recognize the certain virus using the signal of the virus’ spectroscopy.

Take viral hemorrhagic septicemia as the example, the effective detection chip will benefit the society a lot with its significant profit, according to the doctor-in-charge in the Department of Traumatology of the Hospital of National Taiwan University:

1. An improvement of the medical detection: this innovative invention based on the nanotechnology has just made it available to get the detection result within only thirty minutes, which is much more effective than the conventional way of developing bacteria. Moreover, it correctly tells whether the certain bacteria are medicine-preventive and thus improves the accuracy of the medical detection.
2. Reduce the possible complications and deaths of the viral hemorrhagic septicemia: Effectively choose the appropriate antibiotics for the treatment of viral hemorrhagic septicemia instead of the empirical use. It will surely help the patients survive a lot and reduce the possibilities of organ failure.
3. Antibiotics control: Avoid the abuse of antibiotics and the movement of medicine-preventive bacteria.
4. Cost down the medical expenses.

Also, this platform technique of the efficient detection shows a very valuable profit itself with the potential practice. First of all, this technology can be practiced for the blood specimen collection. Furthermore, it can be promoted into the field of environmental pollutions, food-and-drug control, the detection and the recognition of virus and cancer, and so on. All prove that this is indeed a great contribution regarding the efficient virus detection and the improvement for a better environment and medical secure over the centuries.