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娜堡分校的范旭东教授，他开发了一种新的生物测定平台。ELISA性能的显著提高将使几乎所有生物/生物医学学科以及行业受益，因为它可以检测或表征原本无法以更低的成本检测到的分析物。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，在生物检测公司实习将为他们提供在工业环境中获得第一手经验的绝佳机会。知识和仪器的传播将包括期刊出版物、会议报告、专利申请、公共研讨会和在技术贸易展上展示原型。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娜堡的一家生物测定公司进行独立验证。最终，该仪器的传播将通过开办公司或与工业公司合作进行商业化。该项目的目标是开发一种基于光流体激光阵列的酶联免疫吸附测定（ELISA）仪器，该仪器可以显着提高当前基于荧光的ELISA在检测限，动态范围和样品消耗方面的性能。传统的酶联免疫吸附试验在生物科学和生物医学领域已被广泛应用了半个多世纪。它使用荧光作为传感信号，具有灵敏度低、动态范围小、样品消耗较大等缺点。在这个NSF项目中，新的ELISA平台在光流激光腔内进行ELISA。用激光发射代替荧光作为传感信号。特别地，激光发射开始发生时的激光起始时间用于定量激光腔内的分析物。预计与传统ELISA相比，检测限和动态范围均可提高100 ~ 1000倍。同时，样品消耗量将减少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.