Fig. 3

In an ex vivo approach the injected nanosensors are derivatized as to catch a contaminant of interest after mixing. Beside elimination of contaminants, a magnetic separation step also allows recollecting the injected agents, and separately removing the caught contaminants from the carrier, followed by an analysis of the desorbed contaminants. The possibility to sample contaminants in larger blood volumes but desorb the collected material into a small volume further permits up-concentration thus facilitating the detection of low concentration contaminants or biomarkers