Conference reports

Abstract

This symposium was held at the scenic campus of the University of Wollongong set just beneath Mount Keira. It was organized by Professor G. Wallace (Intelligent Polymers Research Laboratory), and aimed to bring together scientists and industrialists in the Asia Pacific region working in the area of biosensors, to review recent scientific advances in this subject, as well as to discuss how the technology can by commercialized. The theme of commercialization was the subject of both the first and final talks. In the opening lecture, Dr. B. Cornell (AMBRI) gave an interesting account of how two companies in the biosensor area had gone about commercializing their respective products. He suggested that the best approach was for inventors to keep a low profile for as long as possible and not to oversell their technology, then to negotiate the field of use and maintain a clear strategy. In his address, Dr.N. Furlong (CSIRO) looked to the future and suggested that although very few biosensor products had emerged to-date in the market place, there was still scope for them to emerge, particularly in the environmental area (pesticide residues, hydrocarbon residuals, toxins, gaseous emissions, etc.). He suggested that some of the problems to date had been caused by the fact that 'proteins are much smarter than those who choose to work with them'. New products would have to out-perform existing methods in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, time of analysis and cost, and provide new performance in terms of realtime measurements.In the main body of the conference, there were a number of interesting presentations. Dr. H. Weetall (NIST) discussed recent advances made in self-assembly of protein pores of 1-2 nm in diameter which could lead to the development of highly sensitive and specific sensors for cations and protein antigens and antibodies. He also alluded to work going on to develop an artificial retina based on the electro-optical properties of bacteriorhodopsin on semi-conducting electrodes, and on the use of tightly focused laser light trapping for the sub-attomolar detection of antigens (10-100 molecules in 1 pl of sample). Professor M. Haskard (University of South Australia) discussed the advances in microelectronics as they related to sensor array design, and how arrays of 100 X 100 are in the process of being developed on single chips. The use of neural networks to aid in the processing of information was discussed both by Professor M. Haskard and Dr. D. Levy (University of Sydney). The requirement for such data processing is needed for instruments such as the electronic nose.