Whispering Gallery Mode Imaging for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer

这个由生物传感/CBET项目授予的NSF奖项支持堪萨斯大学邓恩教授开发能够实现大规模多路传输能力的创新生物传感平台的工作。这些项目围绕着将灵敏的荧光成像与小型耳语走廊模式(WGM)谐振器相结合来开发新的、廉价的生物检测方法。WGM谐振器可以通过周围折射率的变化来检测分析物的结合，这为生物传感提供了一种灵敏的无标记方法。通过将这些谐振器与荧光成像相结合，我们克服了将它们集成到有用的生物传感平台中进行多路分析检测的许多困难。此外，这种方法为了解世界粮食安全机制结构提供了一个独特的窗口，并可以跟踪这种结构如何随着外部条件的变化而演变。因此，这里提出的将最先进的高分辨率显微镜测量结果与详细的数值模拟结果进行比较的基础研究，将增加对这些有趣结构的基本性质的洞察，并为生物传感器的开发带来新的方法。这些新平台的多重生物传感能力将被用来开发新的生物检测方法，用于卵巢癌的早期检测。卵巢癌仍然是女性癌症相关死亡的主要原因，尽管积极的手术和化疗方法的发展在早期治疗这种癌症方面取得了非凡的成功。因此，能够进行早期诊断的新筛查方法可能会对许多人的健康和生活质量产生重大影响。因此，这些项目结合了化学、物理和生物学的基本方面，创建了新的生物传感平台，其总体目标是开发卵巢癌的早期筛查。

1134222DunnThis NSF award by the Biosensing/CBET program supports work by Professor Dunn at the University of Kansas to develop innovative biosensing platforms that enable large scale multiplexing capabilities. These projects revolve around integrating sensitive fluorescence imaging with small whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonators to develop new, inexpensive bioassays. WGM resonators can sense analyte binding through changes in their surrounding refractive index which offers a sensitive label-free approach for biosensing. By coupling these resonators with fluorescence imaging, we overcome many of the difficulties associated with integrating them into useful biosensing platforms for multiplexed detection of analytes. Moreover, this approach provides a unique window into WGM structure and can track how this structure evolves with changes in external conditions. The fundamental studies proposed here comparing results from state-of-the-art high resolution microscopy measurements with detailed numerical simulations, therefore, will add insights into the fundamental properties of these interesting structures and lead to new approaches for biosensor development. The multiplexed biosensing capabilities of these new platforms will be exploited to develop new bioassays for the early detection of ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer remains a leading cause of cancer related deaths among the female population despite the development of aggressive surgical and chemotherapeutic treatments that have been extraordinarily successful at treating the cancer in early stages. New screening approaches capable of early stage diagnosis, therefore, can potentially have a significant impact in the health and quality of life for many. These projects, therefore, combine fundamental aspects of chemistry, physics, and biology to create new biosensing platforms with an applied overall goal of developing early screens for ovarian cancer.