Fast Protease Assay Using Nanoengineered Photonic Crystals

Proteases are a family of enzymes that play a central role in cellular metabolism and are key players in many diseases, including cancer. Conventional assays for protease activity are often slow – most take up to 24 hours to generate results – and require relatively large samples – in the 100 to 500 microliter size – to achieve sensitivity capable of detecting low picomole amounts of protease. These characteristics hinder both basic research and drug development efforts.