Research Areas - (2) NV-Diamond Lateral-Flow Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Full path: Physics > Quantum Sensing > NV Centers > NV-Diamond Lateral-Flow Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Department(s)/lab(s): Division of Medicine / London Centre for Nanotechnology | McKendry Group / London Centre for Nanotechnology (Q-BIOMED) @ UCL
Summary:

McKendry co-directs Q-BIOMED, the UK's national quantum-biomedical-sensing research hub (UKRI/NIHR, ~GBP24M), which brings NV-diamond and other quantum sensors into clinical diagnostics. Her own group has developed nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond-labelled lateral-flow and rapid molecular tests -- including a quantum-enhanced SARS-CoV-2 antigen test and single-molecule HIV RNA detection -- that exploit resonant microwave control of the NV spin state to separate signal from background and push rapid point-of-care diagnostics toward single-molecule sensitivity, a direct human-diagnostics application of quantum sensing.

Department(s)/lab(s): Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering | Miller Quantum Biosensing Group @ UCL
Summary:

Miller develops nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond quantum biosensors for rapid diagnostics, controlling the NV spin state with resonant green/microwave illumination to frequency-separate fluorescence signal from background and achieve single-molecule detection of nucleic acids (e.g. HIV RNA with a short isothermal amplification step) in lateral-flow and widefield formats. His current projects span nanodiamond sensors for point-of-care disease diagnostics, quantum sensing at neural-interface implants, and wide-field quantum sensing of large randomly-oriented nanodiamond ensembles in biological samples, actively recruiting PhD students through the Q-BIOMED hub.