STTR Phase I: High Brightness Fluorophores for Bioscience Applications

这项小型企业技术转让项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是开发用于流式细胞仪的新荧光团，以便每秒检测和分选数千个细胞。作为生物医学研究的重要成像试剂，荧光团的市场机会巨大且不断增长，对多色流式细胞仪和其他细胞成像技术的需求也在不断增长。该技术的目标是简化下一代流式细胞仪的设计并降低成本，通过简化操作程序和降低拥有成本来增强流式细胞仪的吸引力和普及程度，为流式细胞仪制造商（仪器和试剂）创造新的市场机会，并使流式细胞仪在临床实验室中广泛使用，从而促进更有效的健康疾病诊断，从而允许早期治疗。本STTR一期项目拟创建一种平台技术，通过阻断荧光猝灭途径来增强荧光团的荧光亮度。理想情况下，所提出的技术将提供增强的荧光亮度高达250- 1000倍的现有荧光团。其目标是通过克服溢出的缺点来提高流式细胞术的检测效率，减少或消除对自身荧光背景补偿的需要，使科学家、工程师和技术人员能够在更短的总体时间内获得更好的流式细胞术数据，并允许对低丰度细胞特别是干细胞研究中的细胞进行检测和分选。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project will be to develop new fluorophores for use with flow cytometers to enable the detection and sorting of thousands of cells per second. The market opportunity for fluorophores that are important imaging reagents for biomedical research is significant and growing, and there is a growing demand for multi-color flow cytometers and other cell imaging technologies. The goal for this technology is to simplify the design and reduce the cost of next generation flow cytometers, enhance the attraction and popularity of flow cytometry by simplifying the operation procedures and reducing the ownership cost, create new market opportunity for flow cytometry manufacturers (instrument, and reagents), and enable wide spread use of flow cytometry in clinical labs that would promote more effective diagnosis of health disorders and thus allow earlier treatments. This STTR Phase I project proposes to create a platform technology that can enhance the fluorescence brightness of fluorophores by blocking the fluorescent quenching pathways. Ideally, the proposed technology would offer enhanced fluorescent brightness up to 250-1,000 times of existing fluorophores. The goal is to enhance the detection efficiency of flow cytometry by overcoming the drawback of spillover, reduce or eliminate the need of autofluorescence background compensation, enable scientists, engineers, and technicians to obtain better flow cytometry data at shorter overall durations, and allow the detection and sorting of low abundance cells especially those in stem cell research.