Nov. 17, 2006 — NanoSensors Inc., a nanotechnology development company that develops instruments and sensors to detect explosives, chemical and biological agents, announced that it has completed manufacturing the initial prototype of its planned product to detect E. coli. The product is based on the company’s recently licensed nanoporous silicon-based biosensor technology to detect E. coli.

The proposed sensor has been designed to consist of two core functional parts: a disposable housing unit in which the actual sensor device is mounted and a separate, external data acquisition unit. Based on this design, the sensor device transmits signals across electrical leads to the data acquisition unit, which accepts the output signal from the housing unit and converts the signal to the appropriate format to display the results.

The first prototype of the disposable housing unit which holds the actual sensor device was built during October 2006. The company has completed a series of design tests on the disposable housing unit and following certain design improvements the company believes that it has a functional prototype.

In November, the company initiated a second testing phase in order to test the interoperability between the housing unit and the data acquisition unit, which is the second core part of the proposed sensor. The first hardware prototype of the data acquisition unit was recently completed. Initial testing on the integration of the disposable housing and data acquisition unit has started and NanoSensors says that to date no design problems have arisen.