I-Corps: Add-on Brillouin Module for Confocal Microscopes

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the introduction of a new microscopy modality, which enables non-contact mechanical mapping, and the development of the corresponding add-on module compatible to commercial confocal microscopy instruments. Confocal microscopy instruments are widely used in academia and industry but do not provide mechanical information of samples; mechanical testing instruments are also ubiquitous in both academia and industry but are contact-based. This project brings the non-contact mechanical testing capability to optical microscopy instruments. Beyond enabling traditional material characterizations with high spatio-temporal resolution, the instrument will be highly impactful in biomedical research. The past two decades have seen increasing recognition of the prominent role of the mechanical interplay between cells and their local microenvironment to regulate cell function. A widely utilized optical microscope for cell biomechanics would accelerate our understanding of mechano-chemical pathways and their role in the control of biological processes. Thus, this instrument is expected to be broadly used by biomedical researchers and material scientists in industry and academia to access cell, tissue and biomaterial mechanical properties without perturbing the sample and with high 3D resolution. This I-Corps project explores the commercialization of an add-on module for confocal microscopes that features novel Brillouin spectroscopy. Brillouin spectroscopy has been widely used for material testing and environmental sensing since the 1970's using specialized spectrometers that required 10 min to hours for a single measurement. In recent years, a new type of spectrometer was developed to improve speed of acquisition by several orders of magnitude and allowed to obtain 3D elasticity maps of biomaterials, biological cells and tissues. Thanks to the integration in commercial confocal microscopes, several highly impactful areas (e.g. stem cell lineage differentiation, malignancy transformation) will benefit from this technology as it enables gathering biomechanical information in environments and settings such as 3D microenvironments that mimic the in vivo conditions. In addition, the instrument will enable the study of cell biomechanics on microfluidic platforms in order to control microenvironment conditions. Being compatible with traditional optical microscopes, this technology can also be combined with force mapping modalities thus enabling to investigate how cells sense mechanical stimuli and transduce them into biochemical signals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.