Engineering Research Equipment Grant: Biosensor Laboratory

用于生物反应器应用的市售溶解氧探针具有许多不希望的特性，例如校准漂移和流动灵敏度。通过利用最先进的集成电路制造技术，建议开发一种蒸汽灭菌的溶解氧探针，它不会表现出这些缺点。此外，将开发具有几微米大小的传感尖端的微探针，用于监测固定细胞层内各种发酵底物和产物的局部浓度。这些传感器特别适用于监测剪切敏感哺乳动物细胞培养和固定化细胞的生物过程，近年来在工业上具有重要意义。微电路制造技术在溶解氧探针上的成功应用有望为生物过程监测传感器的制造提供广泛的可能性。通过在单个芯片上集成多个传感器，可以同时监测多个参数。通过结合酶和单克隆抗体，传感器芯片可以用于检测下游和上游生物过程中涉及的各种小分子和大分子。所提出的用于固定细胞应用的微探针将使层的测量成为可能。这种以前不可能实现的测量，有望极大地帮助科学家和工程师研究固定化细胞的生理行为。所获得的知识可以应用于优化生物反应器的操作和设计。因此，预计拟议的传感器将对促进生物技术这一国家重点领域作出重大贡献。

Commercially available dissolved oxygen probes for bioreactor applications have a number of undesirable characteristics such as calibration drift and flow sensitivity. By making use of the state- of-the-art integrated circuit fabrication technology, it is proposed to develop a steam-sterilizable dissolved oxygen probe, which does not exhibit these shortcomings. Also, microprobes with a sensing tip of a few-micron size are to be developed for monitoring local concentrations of various fermentation substrates and products within the immobilized cell layers. These proposed sensors are especially useful for monitoring bioprocesses involving shear-sensitive mammalian cell cultures and immobilized cells, which gained significant industrial importance in recent years. A successful application of the microcircuit fabrication technology to constructing dissolved oxygen probes is expected to open wide ranging possibilities in fabricating sensors for bioprocess monitoring in general. By integrating several sensors on a single chip, many parameters can be monitored simultaneously. By incorporating enzymes and monoclonal antibodies, sensor chips can be made for detecting various small and large molecules involved in downstream as well as upstream bioprocesses. The proposed microprobes for immobilized cell applications will enable measurements of layers. Such measurements, which have not been possible previously, are expected to help scientists and engineers greatly in studying the physiological behaviors of the immobilized cells. The knowledge obtained can then be applied to optimitzing bioreactor operations and designs. The proposed sensors are thus expected to contribute significantly in advancing biotechnology, an area of national prominence.