Achievement of Researchers of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in Designing Ochratoxin Identification Aptasensor

Researchers of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences managed to detect Ochratoxin A in human blood serum by designing a type of Aptasensor.

According to WEBDA, Ochratoxin A is a type of toxin produced by fungi that can be found in a wide range of nutrition such as grains, coffee, grape juice, dried fruit, meat products and milk and can cause renal and hepatic toxicity as well as teratogenic impacts in humans and animals. Therefore, its detection in serum and food products is of great importance.

For this purpose, researchers from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences managed to detect Ochratoxin A in blood serum, even in very small amounts, by designing Aptasensors with high accuracy.

Dr. Khalil Abnous, Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry Department of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences stated that in this study, very small amounts of Ochratoxin A were detected in human blood serum by designing an Aptasensor based on the Fluorescence method using two nanoparticles, “Gold” and “Silica”.

This Faculty Member of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences pointed that the designed biosensor is able to detect very small amounts of Ochratoxin (detection limit of 98 picomolar) with highly suitable selectivity.

Dr. Abnous stated that various methods such as Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry and ELISA have so far been used for the determination of ochratoxin A. The application of these methods requires high cost and time as well as skilled and experienced work forces. 

It is worth mentioning that aptamers are sequences of single-stranded DNA and RNA, which are able to connect proprietarily to their targets by using the enriched isolated SELEX process.

Excellent stability, easy chemical modification on them, easy synthesis, relatively low price, and lack of toxicity and immunogenicity are among the advantages of using aptamers that turn them into unique substances for construction of biosensors.

This study was carried out by Dr. Khalil Abnous (Associate Professor of Department of Chemistry and the corresponding author), Dr. Mohammad Taghdisi (Assistant Professor of Department of Biotechnology), Dr. Mohammad Ramezani (Assistant Professor of Department of Biotechnology), and Mr. Nour Mohammad Danesh (Ph.D. student of the Faculty of Pharmacy in Nanotechnology). The results was published in the journal Nanoscale in 2016 with an Impact Factor of 7.4.

For more information, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26791437.