NANOSPHERE

Nanosphere, Inc. is a nanotechnology-based healthcare company, making clinical diagnostic tests that are two to three times as sensitive as those commonly used in hospital labs today and much simpler, taking just hours rather than days or weeks to complete. The company's instruments, which use microfluidics to pull DNA and proteins from a sample, detect genetic variations in blood that make some drugs more effective in some patients than others. The key is an array of gold nanoparticles studded with chemicals that capture characteristic proteins and nucleic acids from clinical samples such as blood.