IDBR TYPE A: Optofluidic laser array based ultrasensitive ELISA instrument with a large dynamic range

美国国家科学基金会IDBR奖授予密歇根大学安阿伯的范旭东教授，以开发一种新的生物测定平台。 显著提高的ELISA性能肯定会使几乎所有的生物/生物医学学科以及行业受益，通过检测或表征分析物，否则将无法以低得多的成本检测。此外，该项目的学生将通过实验室研究和与密歇根大学创业硕士项目的合作，接受严格的技术和创业培训。此外，在生物测定公司实习将为他们提供一个极好的机会，在工业环境中获得第一手经验。知识和仪器的传播将包括期刊出版、会议演示、专利申请、公开研讨会以及在技术贸易展上演示原型。特别是，原型将被放置在密歇根大学医学院的两个实验室和安阿伯的一家生物测定公司进行独立验证。本项目的目标是开发一种基于光流控激光阵列的酶联免疫吸附测定（ELISA）仪器，该仪器可以在检测限、动态范围和样品消耗方面显著改善目前基于荧光的ELISA的性能。传统的酶联免疫吸附试验（ELISA）已在生物科学和生物医学领域广泛应用了半个多世纪。它使用荧光作为感测信号，并且具有低灵敏度、低动态范围和相对大的样品消耗。这个NSF项目中的新ELISA平台在光流体激光腔内进行ELISA。代替荧光，激光发射被用作感测信号。特别地，当激光发射开始发生时的激光起始时间用于量化激光腔内的分析物。预计与传统ELISA相比，检测限和动态范围将提高100至1000倍。同时，样品消耗将减少1000倍以上。

This NSF IDBR award is made to Prof. Xudong Fan at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to develop a new bioassay platform. Significantly improved ELISA performance will certainly benefit nearly all biological/biomedical disciplines as well as industries by detecting or characterizing analytes that would otherwise be undetectable at much lower costs. In addition, the students in the project will receive rigorous technical and entrepreneurial training through lab research and partnership with the Master of Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Michigan. Furthermore, internship at bioassay companies will provide an excellent opportunity for them to receive first-hand experience in an industrial setting. Dissemination of knowledge and instrument will include journal publications, conference presentations, patent filing, public seminars, and demonstration of the prototype at technology tradeshows. In particular, the prototype will be placed in two labs at the Univ. Michigan Medical School and a bioassay company at Ann Arbor for independent verification. Eventually, the dissemination of the instrument will be through commercialization via a start-up company or in partnership with industrial companies.The goal of this project is to develop an optofluidic laser array based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) instrument that can significantly improve the performance of the current fluorescence based ELISA in detection limit, dynamic range, and sample consumption. Traditional ELISA has been widely used in biological sciences and biomedicine for over half a century. It uses fluorescence as the sensing signal and suffers from low sensitivity, low dynamic range, and relatively large sample consumption. The new ELISA platform in this NSF project performs ELISA inside an optofluidic laser cavity. Instead of fluorescence, the laser emission is used as the sensing signal. In particular, the laser onset time when the laser emission starts to occur is used to quantify the analytes inside the laser cavity. It is expected that 100 to 1000-fold improvement in both detection limit and dynamic range will be achieved in comparison with the traditional ELISA. Meanwhile, the sample consumption will be reduced over 1000-fold.