Lab Quality Testing Outside the Lab

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences presents professor David D. Cunningham from Eastern Kentucky University. His lecture on "Lab Quality Testing Outside the Lab" will be at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 19, in the Chemistry Building, room 105.

Cunningham's lecture will cover the ideal analytical device would be able to test anything, anywhere, but we aren't quite there, yet. The best example of a "test anywhere" measurement is the blood glucose test where 20 billion strips per year are used by people with diabetes to measure their sugar level. Obtaining blood from areas other than the fingertips is less painful, and the trademarked SofTact meter automates vacuum extraction of micro amounts of blood along with automatic transfer of blood to a test strip. In a second example of an electrochemical sensor, redox labeled shape-switching aptamers are coated on gold electrodes in a self-assembled monolayer. Binding of the analyte brings the redox label closer to the gold surface which can be easily measured using square wave voltammetry. A major advantage of this approach is that the sensor continuously monitors the analyte concentration. Two additional examples focusing on forensic applications will be discussed: 1) a portable system for electrochemical enhancement of latent fingerprints on metal surfaces, and 2) collection and analysis of trace drugs from fabrics, like the shirt off your back, using a patterned absorbent disk and ambient pressure ionization mass spectrometry. As instrumentation becomes smaller, additional opportunities will arise for obtaining laboratory quality results outside of the laboratory.