Surround optical fiber immunoassay (SOFIA) is an ultrasensitive, in vitro diagnostic platform incorporating a surround optical fiber assembly that captures fluorescence emissions from an entire sample. The technology's defining characteristics are its extremely high limit of detection, sensitivity, and dynamic range. SOFIA’s sensitivity is measured at the attogram level (10−18g), making it about one billion times more sensitive than conventional diagnostic techniques. Based on its enhanced dynamic range, SOFIA is able to discriminate levels of analyte in a sample over 10 orders of magnitude, facilitating accurate titering.
As a diagnostic platform, SOFIA has a broad range of applications. Several studies have already demonstrated SOFIA’s unprecedented ability to detect naturally occurring prions in the blood and urine of disease carriers. This is expected to lead to the first reliable ante mortem screening test for vCJD, BSE, scrapie, CWD, and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Given the technology’s extreme sensitivity, additional unique applications are anticipated, including in vitro tests for other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Sofia (/ˈsoʊfiə/) (Bulgarian:София, Sofiya,pronounced[ˈsɔfijɐ]) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. Sofia is the 15th largest city in the European Union with population of more than 1.2 million people. The city is located at the foot of Vitosha Mountain in the western part of the country, within less than 50 kilometres (31mi) drive from the Serbian border. Its location in the centre of the Balkan peninsula means that it is the midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, whereas the Aegean Sea is the closest to it.
Sofia has been an area of human habitation since at least 7000 BCE. Many of the major universities, cultural institutions and commercial companies of Bulgaria are concentrated in Sofia. Sofia is one of the top 10 best places for start-up business in the world, especially in IT technologies. Sofia is Europe's most affordable capital to visit as of 2013.
Names
For the longest time the city possessed a Thracian name, derived from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian,Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin. The Serdi and the name of emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus (53 – 117 AD) prompted the Romans to give the city the combinative name of Ulpia Serdica; Ulpia is derived from an Umbrian cognate of the Latin word lupus, meaning "wolf."
It seems that the first written mention of Serdica was made during his reign and the last mention was in the 19th century in a Bulgarian text (Сардакіи, Sardaki). During the Romans civitas Serdenisium was mentioned the "brightest city of the Serdi" in official inscriptions. The city was major throughout the past ever since Antiquity, when Roman emperor Constantine the Great referred to it as "my Rome", and it nearly became his capital.
Sofia (Greek: Σοφία or Σοφιά also Isle of Gaia) is an island of the Echinades, among the Ionian Islands group of Greece. As of 2011, it had no resident population.
In June 2015 it was reported that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were considering buying the 17 hectares (42 acres) island for $4.7 million. It has planning permission for six villas.
Le Lab Presents: Measuring and Mimicking Biology - Eyes, Noses, Genes and Proteins with David Walt
Wyss Core Faculty member David Walt, Ph.D. presented a talk at Le Laboratoire Cambridge on January 23rd 2019, titled Measuring and Mimicking Biology: Eyes, Noses, Genes and Proteins. Walt and his team have taken inspiration from both the visual and olfactory systems to design sensor arrays that are inspired by the properties of the natural systems. Optical fiber arrays that mimic the structure of the compound eyes of insects are used to create sensing arrays based on principles of the mammalian olfactory system. Many design features of mammalian systems are incorporated into these array sensors and the resulting sensing behavior recapitulates the natural system. In addition, the architecture of the arrays has revolutionized the scale of both genomic and proteomic data that can be collected...
published: 19 Feb 2019
Prion | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
00:03:14 1 Prion protein
00:03:24 1.1 Discovery
00:07:29 1.2 Structure
00:08:31 1.2.1 PrPsupC/sup
00:09:56 1.2.2 PrPsupres/sup
00:10:50 1.2.3 PrPsupSc/sup
00:12:07 1.3 Function
00:12:48 1.3.1 PrP and regulated cell death
00:13:18 1.3.2 PrP and long-term memory
00:14:05 1.3.3 PrP and stem cell renewal
00:14:42 2 Prion replication mechanism
00:17:24 3 Prion diseases and their transmission properties
00:20:38 3.1 Transmission
00:22:23 3.1.1 Prions in plants
00:23:08 3.2 Sterilization
00:25:52 4 Fungi
00:29:00 5 Potential treatments and diagnosis
00:32:42 6 Role of prions in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies
00:33:17 6.1 Prion hypothesis
00:33:43 6.1.1 Protein-only hypothesis
00:36:06 6.1.2 Gen...
published: 07 May 2019
Joe Wang on next generation health sensors | ApplySci @ Stanford
Recorded at the Wearable Tech + Digital Health + Neurotech conference at Stanford University on February 21-22, 2019
published: 12 May 2019
Distinguished Lecture Series #15 - Prof. Mehmet Ertugrul & Prof. Mehmet Parlak
Two Professors, one in Engineering and another in Medicine, from Ataturk University will share the stage and talk about Developing a COVID-19 Fiber Optic Biosensor for Faster Diagnostics and Monitoring. Don't forget to join us!
published: 19 Jan 2021
PULMOCON 21-(Day 14): “New diagnostic tools in pulmonary practice: Microbiology”
Pulmocon-21,
19th All India Pulmonary Update
Organised by: Institute of Pulmocare & Research
(Day-14, Date: 23-01-22, Time: 7 pm,
Module: “New diagnostic tools in pulmonary practice: Microbiology”)
Speaker: Dr. Shubhranshu Mandal
Chairperson: Dr. Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhury
Wyss Core Faculty member David Walt, Ph.D. presented a talk at Le Laboratoire Cambridge on January 23rd 2019, titled Measuring and Mimicking Biology: Eyes, Nose...
Wyss Core Faculty member David Walt, Ph.D. presented a talk at Le Laboratoire Cambridge on January 23rd 2019, titled Measuring and Mimicking Biology: Eyes, Noses, Genes and Proteins. Walt and his team have taken inspiration from both the visual and olfactory systems to design sensor arrays that are inspired by the properties of the natural systems. Optical fiber arrays that mimic the structure of the compound eyes of insects are used to create sensing arrays based on principles of the mammalian olfactory system. Many design features of mammalian systems are incorporated into these array sensors and the resulting sensing behavior recapitulates the natural system. In addition, the architecture of the arrays has revolutionized the scale of both genomic and proteomic data that can be collected. Such capabilities are transforming health care.
Wyss Core Faculty member David Walt, Ph.D. presented a talk at Le Laboratoire Cambridge on January 23rd 2019, titled Measuring and Mimicking Biology: Eyes, Noses, Genes and Proteins. Walt and his team have taken inspiration from both the visual and olfactory systems to design sensor arrays that are inspired by the properties of the natural systems. Optical fiber arrays that mimic the structure of the compound eyes of insects are used to create sensing arrays based on principles of the mammalian olfactory system. Many design features of mammalian systems are incorporated into these array sensors and the resulting sensing behavior recapitulates the natural system. In addition, the architecture of the arrays has revolutionized the scale of both genomic and proteomic data that can be collected. Such capabilities are transforming health care.
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
00:03:14 1 Prion protein
00:03:24 1.1 Discovery
00:07:29 1.2 Struct...
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
00:03:14 1 Prion protein
00:03:24 1.1 Discovery
00:07:29 1.2 Structure
00:08:31 1.2.1 PrPsupC/sup
00:09:56 1.2.2 PrPsupres/sup
00:10:50 1.2.3 PrPsupSc/sup
00:12:07 1.3 Function
00:12:48 1.3.1 PrP and regulated cell death
00:13:18 1.3.2 PrP and long-term memory
00:14:05 1.3.3 PrP and stem cell renewal
00:14:42 2 Prion replication mechanism
00:17:24 3 Prion diseases and their transmission properties
00:20:38 3.1 Transmission
00:22:23 3.1.1 Prions in plants
00:23:08 3.2 Sterilization
00:25:52 4 Fungi
00:29:00 5 Potential treatments and diagnosis
00:32:42 6 Role of prions in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies
00:33:17 6.1 Prion hypothesis
00:33:43 6.1.1 Protein-only hypothesis
00:36:06 6.1.2 Genetic factors
00:37:21 6.1.3 Multi-component hypothesis
00:39:34 6.1.4 Difficulties associated with the prion hypothesis
00:41:01 6.2 Heavy metal poisoning hypothesis
00:42:13 6.3 Viral hypothesis
00:44:54 6.4 Virino hypothesis
00:45:15 6.5 iSpiroplasma/i hypothesis
00:46:30 6.6 iAcinetobacter/i-autoimmunity hypothesis
00:46:55 7 Role of prions in other diseases
00:50:01 7.1 Role in neurodegenerative disease
00:52:36 8 Etymology and pronunciation
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
Listen on Google Assistant through Extra Audio:
https://assistant.google.com/services/invoke/uid/0000001a130b3f91
Other Wikipedia audio articles at:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wikipedia+tts
Upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
https://github.com/nodef/wikipedia-tts
Speaking Rate: 0.9563440260887615
Voice name: en-GB-Wavenet-C
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
Prions are misfolded proteins which characterize several fatal neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold; the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties. The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle". Prions composed of the prion protein (PrP) are hypothesized as the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle (commonly known as "mad cow disease"), and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.
A prion disease is a proteopathy. In humans, prions are believed to be the cause of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), its variant (vCJD), Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome, fatal familial insomnia and kuru. All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment and are always fatal. There is also evidence suggesting prions may play a part in the process of Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson's disease, and these have been termed prion-like diseases.
Several yeast proteins have also been identified as having prionogenic properties.
The hypothesized role of a protein as an infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA or both). Synthetic prions, created in the laboratory independent of any biological source, have little or no ability to cause infection with TSEs. However, when synthetic prions are administered in combination with cofactors, such as phosphatidylethanolamine and RNA molecules, then this can transmit TSEs.Several scientific observations remain unexplained by the prion hypothesis: It is known that mice with severe combined immunodeficiency do not develop scrapie following inoculation with brain tissue from animals infected with scrapie, suggesting that either the role of immunity in prion pathogenesis is incompletely understood or that there is some other flaw in current understanding of prion pathophysiology. More recently, it has been shown that scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease may require agent-specific nucleic acids for transmission of infection. For these reasons, the prion/TSE hypothesis incompletely accounts for the observed data.Prion aggregates are stable, accumulate in infected tissue and are associated with tissue damage and cell death. This ...
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
00:03:14 1 Prion protein
00:03:24 1.1 Discovery
00:07:29 1.2 Structure
00:08:31 1.2.1 PrPsupC/sup
00:09:56 1.2.2 PrPsupres/sup
00:10:50 1.2.3 PrPsupSc/sup
00:12:07 1.3 Function
00:12:48 1.3.1 PrP and regulated cell death
00:13:18 1.3.2 PrP and long-term memory
00:14:05 1.3.3 PrP and stem cell renewal
00:14:42 2 Prion replication mechanism
00:17:24 3 Prion diseases and their transmission properties
00:20:38 3.1 Transmission
00:22:23 3.1.1 Prions in plants
00:23:08 3.2 Sterilization
00:25:52 4 Fungi
00:29:00 5 Potential treatments and diagnosis
00:32:42 6 Role of prions in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies
00:33:17 6.1 Prion hypothesis
00:33:43 6.1.1 Protein-only hypothesis
00:36:06 6.1.2 Genetic factors
00:37:21 6.1.3 Multi-component hypothesis
00:39:34 6.1.4 Difficulties associated with the prion hypothesis
00:41:01 6.2 Heavy metal poisoning hypothesis
00:42:13 6.3 Viral hypothesis
00:44:54 6.4 Virino hypothesis
00:45:15 6.5 iSpiroplasma/i hypothesis
00:46:30 6.6 iAcinetobacter/i-autoimmunity hypothesis
00:46:55 7 Role of prions in other diseases
00:50:01 7.1 Role in neurodegenerative disease
00:52:36 8 Etymology and pronunciation
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
Listen on Google Assistant through Extra Audio:
https://assistant.google.com/services/invoke/uid/0000001a130b3f91
Other Wikipedia audio articles at:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wikipedia+tts
Upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
https://github.com/nodef/wikipedia-tts
Speaking Rate: 0.9563440260887615
Voice name: en-GB-Wavenet-C
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
Prions are misfolded proteins which characterize several fatal neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold; the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties. The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle". Prions composed of the prion protein (PrP) are hypothesized as the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle (commonly known as "mad cow disease"), and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.
A prion disease is a proteopathy. In humans, prions are believed to be the cause of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), its variant (vCJD), Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome, fatal familial insomnia and kuru. All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment and are always fatal. There is also evidence suggesting prions may play a part in the process of Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson's disease, and these have been termed prion-like diseases.
Several yeast proteins have also been identified as having prionogenic properties.
The hypothesized role of a protein as an infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA or both). Synthetic prions, created in the laboratory independent of any biological source, have little or no ability to cause infection with TSEs. However, when synthetic prions are administered in combination with cofactors, such as phosphatidylethanolamine and RNA molecules, then this can transmit TSEs.Several scientific observations remain unexplained by the prion hypothesis: It is known that mice with severe combined immunodeficiency do not develop scrapie following inoculation with brain tissue from animals infected with scrapie, suggesting that either the role of immunity in prion pathogenesis is incompletely understood or that there is some other flaw in current understanding of prion pathophysiology. More recently, it has been shown that scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease may require agent-specific nucleic acids for transmission of infection. For these reasons, the prion/TSE hypothesis incompletely accounts for the observed data.Prion aggregates are stable, accumulate in infected tissue and are associated with tissue damage and cell death. This ...
Two Professors, one in Engineering and another in Medicine, from Ataturk University will share the stage and talk about Developing a COVID-19 Fiber Optic Biosen...
Two Professors, one in Engineering and another in Medicine, from Ataturk University will share the stage and talk about Developing a COVID-19 Fiber Optic Biosensor for Faster Diagnostics and Monitoring. Don't forget to join us!
Two Professors, one in Engineering and another in Medicine, from Ataturk University will share the stage and talk about Developing a COVID-19 Fiber Optic Biosensor for Faster Diagnostics and Monitoring. Don't forget to join us!
Pulmocon-21,
19th All India Pulmonary Update
Organised by: Institute of Pulmocare & Research
(Day-14, Date: 23-01-22, Time: 7 pm,
Module: “New diagnostic too...
Pulmocon-21,
19th All India Pulmonary Update
Organised by: Institute of Pulmocare & Research
(Day-14, Date: 23-01-22, Time: 7 pm,
Module: “New diagnostic tools in pulmonary practice: Microbiology”)
Speaker: Dr. Shubhranshu Mandal
Chairperson: Dr. Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhury
Pulmocon-21,
19th All India Pulmonary Update
Organised by: Institute of Pulmocare & Research
(Day-14, Date: 23-01-22, Time: 7 pm,
Module: “New diagnostic tools in pulmonary practice: Microbiology”)
Speaker: Dr. Shubhranshu Mandal
Chairperson: Dr. Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhury
Wyss Core Faculty member David Walt, Ph.D. presented a talk at Le Laboratoire Cambridge on January 23rd 2019, titled Measuring and Mimicking Biology: Eyes, Noses, Genes and Proteins. Walt and his team have taken inspiration from both the visual and olfactory systems to design sensor arrays that are inspired by the properties of the natural systems. Optical fiber arrays that mimic the structure of the compound eyes of insects are used to create sensing arrays based on principles of the mammalian olfactory system. Many design features of mammalian systems are incorporated into these array sensors and the resulting sensing behavior recapitulates the natural system. In addition, the architecture of the arrays has revolutionized the scale of both genomic and proteomic data that can be collected. Such capabilities are transforming health care.
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
00:03:14 1 Prion protein
00:03:24 1.1 Discovery
00:07:29 1.2 Structure
00:08:31 1.2.1 PrPsupC/sup
00:09:56 1.2.2 PrPsupres/sup
00:10:50 1.2.3 PrPsupSc/sup
00:12:07 1.3 Function
00:12:48 1.3.1 PrP and regulated cell death
00:13:18 1.3.2 PrP and long-term memory
00:14:05 1.3.3 PrP and stem cell renewal
00:14:42 2 Prion replication mechanism
00:17:24 3 Prion diseases and their transmission properties
00:20:38 3.1 Transmission
00:22:23 3.1.1 Prions in plants
00:23:08 3.2 Sterilization
00:25:52 4 Fungi
00:29:00 5 Potential treatments and diagnosis
00:32:42 6 Role of prions in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies
00:33:17 6.1 Prion hypothesis
00:33:43 6.1.1 Protein-only hypothesis
00:36:06 6.1.2 Genetic factors
00:37:21 6.1.3 Multi-component hypothesis
00:39:34 6.1.4 Difficulties associated with the prion hypothesis
00:41:01 6.2 Heavy metal poisoning hypothesis
00:42:13 6.3 Viral hypothesis
00:44:54 6.4 Virino hypothesis
00:45:15 6.5 iSpiroplasma/i hypothesis
00:46:30 6.6 iAcinetobacter/i-autoimmunity hypothesis
00:46:55 7 Role of prions in other diseases
00:50:01 7.1 Role in neurodegenerative disease
00:52:36 8 Etymology and pronunciation
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
Listen on Google Assistant through Extra Audio:
https://assistant.google.com/services/invoke/uid/0000001a130b3f91
Other Wikipedia audio articles at:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wikipedia+tts
Upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
https://github.com/nodef/wikipedia-tts
Speaking Rate: 0.9563440260887615
Voice name: en-GB-Wavenet-C
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
Prions are misfolded proteins which characterize several fatal neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold; the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties. The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle". Prions composed of the prion protein (PrP) are hypothesized as the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle (commonly known as "mad cow disease"), and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.
A prion disease is a proteopathy. In humans, prions are believed to be the cause of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), its variant (vCJD), Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome, fatal familial insomnia and kuru. All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment and are always fatal. There is also evidence suggesting prions may play a part in the process of Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson's disease, and these have been termed prion-like diseases.
Several yeast proteins have also been identified as having prionogenic properties.
The hypothesized role of a protein as an infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA or both). Synthetic prions, created in the laboratory independent of any biological source, have little or no ability to cause infection with TSEs. However, when synthetic prions are administered in combination with cofactors, such as phosphatidylethanolamine and RNA molecules, then this can transmit TSEs.Several scientific observations remain unexplained by the prion hypothesis: It is known that mice with severe combined immunodeficiency do not develop scrapie following inoculation with brain tissue from animals infected with scrapie, suggesting that either the role of immunity in prion pathogenesis is incompletely understood or that there is some other flaw in current understanding of prion pathophysiology. More recently, it has been shown that scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease may require agent-specific nucleic acids for transmission of infection. For these reasons, the prion/TSE hypothesis incompletely accounts for the observed data.Prion aggregates are stable, accumulate in infected tissue and are associated with tissue damage and cell death. This ...
Two Professors, one in Engineering and another in Medicine, from Ataturk University will share the stage and talk about Developing a COVID-19 Fiber Optic Biosensor for Faster Diagnostics and Monitoring. Don't forget to join us!
Pulmocon-21,
19th All India Pulmonary Update
Organised by: Institute of Pulmocare & Research
(Day-14, Date: 23-01-22, Time: 7 pm,
Module: “New diagnostic tools in pulmonary practice: Microbiology”)
Speaker: Dr. Shubhranshu Mandal
Chairperson: Dr. Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhury
Surround optical fiber immunoassay (SOFIA) is an ultrasensitive, in vitro diagnostic platform incorporating a surround optical fiber assembly that captures fluorescence emissions from an entire sample. The technology's defining characteristics are its extremely high limit of detection, sensitivity, and dynamic range. SOFIA’s sensitivity is measured at the attogram level (10−18g), making it about one billion times more sensitive than conventional diagnostic techniques. Based on its enhanced dynamic range, SOFIA is able to discriminate levels of analyte in a sample over 10 orders of magnitude, facilitating accurate titering.
As a diagnostic platform, SOFIA has a broad range of applications. Several studies have already demonstrated SOFIA’s unprecedented ability to detect naturally occurring prions in the blood and urine of disease carriers. This is expected to lead to the first reliable ante mortem screening test for vCJD, BSE, scrapie, CWD, and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Given the technology’s extreme sensitivity, additional unique applications are anticipated, including in vitro tests for other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.