BY KATIE BRADY June 16, 2025 Graduate student in electrical and computer engineering Han Lee (left) and Professor Brian Cunningham (right) / Julia Pollack Share What if people could detect cancer and other diseases with the same speed and ease of a pregnancy test or blood glucose meter? Researchers at the Carl R. Woese Institute for […]
News
Bioinspired DNA NanoGripper – World’s Smallest Robotic Hand
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A tiny, four-fingered “hand” folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed […]
Two New Biosensing Instruments Take Big Leap Forward for Point-of-Care Diagnostics
Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) Program Leader Brian Cunningham has developed two new biomarker detection instruments with the potential to transform point-of-care diagnostics. In collaboration with researchers and clinicians at Stanford, Mayo Clinic, and Huntsman Cancer Institute, the Cunningham lab’s new instruments can vividly and rapidly detect a variety of cancer biomarkers using a novel gold nanoparticle […]
Center for Genomic Diagnostics Receives First USDA Grant
Brian Cunningham, Intel Alumni Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Ying Fang, professor of pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine (center) and lab members to develop portable point-of-use biosensor for detection of African swine fever virus in farm environments. / Isaac Mitchell Foreign animal diseases are a global threat to swine production with […]
New photonic crystal approach can enable sensitive and affordable detection of biomarkers
Biomarkers are small molecules of interest to researchers, because they can indicate underlying diseases, often even before symptoms even appear. However, detecting these markers can be challenging as they are often present in very low quantities, especially in the early stages of a disease. Traditional detection methods, while effective, usually require expensive components like prisms, […]
Pairing Two Effects for a Superior Biomarker Detection Method
Researchers from the Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) Program Leader Brian Cunningham’s lab in collaboration with researchers at Washington University have demonstrated a new capability to detect and count individual biomolecules at low concentrations. This technology may significantly improve the efficacy of current cancer detection and measurement methods. Biomarkers play a significant role in diagnostics because their […]
Target Recycling for Ultrasensitive Detection of miRNA Cancer Biomarkers
Researchers set sights on prostate cancer with new, rapid biomarker detection method Feb 6, 2023 | Cancer Center News Cancer Center at Illinois program leader Brian Cunningham is joined by research project members, from the left, Xiaojing Wang and Skye Shepherd, who were co-first authors on the teams’ recently published research. Team members not pictured include: Nantao […]
Amplifying Quantum Dots and Single Molecule Sensing for Cancer
8/22/2022 1:59:35 PM Jenny Applequist for HMNTL Despite recent years’ dramatic improvements in cancer treatment, cancer remains second only to heart disease as a leading cause of death for Americans. But a new Nature Communications paper has reported exactly the kind of breakthrough that cancer patients yearn for: development of a highly sensitive new method for performing a […]
Skye Shepherd Selected for Young Innovator Award
July 20, 2022 Bioengineering graduate student Skye Shepherd was selected for the Young Innovator Award through the 2022 Young Innovator Program, offered and supported through the Catherine and Don Kleinmuntz Center for Genomics in Business and Society and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. The recognition also includes $20,000 to be used further develop Skye’s […]
Early respiratory virus detection research among Royal Society of Chemistry’s top citations
6/23/2022 10:06:55 AM Kim Gudeman, HMNTL In 2019, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were working on a rapid test that could detect horse respiratory viruses in less than 30 minutes using a nasal swab and a smartphone. When the COVID-19 outbreak began later that fall, the team was able to pivot quickly to […]