Dec. 22, 2006 — NanoSensors Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., nanotechnology development company that develops instruments and sensors to detect explosives, chemical and biological agents, announced that it has engaged a third-party contractor to manufacture units of a test version of its biosensor product that will be used for third party field testing.
The company expects to receive delivery of the product units and commence testing during the first quarter of 2007 in order to obtain feedback on the performance of the biosensor. The product is based on the company’s recently licensed nanoporous silicon-based biosensor technology to detect e. Coli.
Although NanoSensors has not entered into testing agreements with third parties, it is seeking to enroll between six to ten users in its product testing program in order to subject the product design to simulated field conditions and to further assess the commercial viability of the current design. It is expected that the testing cycle will continue for a period of approximately three months and the company intends to deploy the biosensors in a number of different testing conditions. After the testing period is complete, the company intends to incorporate user feedback into the product design in order to improve product functionality, as may be appropriate.
As previously announced, the proposed biosensor 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 disposable housing unit which contains the sensor transmits signals across electrical leads to the data acquisition unit, which accepts the output signal from the disposable housing unit and converts the signal to the appropriate format to display the results.