Electrical Detection of Small Molecule Binding to Biological Receptors using Organic Thin Film Transistors : A new approach for label free assays

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Despite continual advances in our knowledge of human biology, with the attendant opportunity for therapeutic interventions in newly discovered biological pathways, the pharmaceutical industry faces a number of significant challenges. Foremost amongst these is a need to improve the efficiency of drug discovery, reducing the time to market for new medicines and lowering attrition in the later stages of drug development. Optimisation of methods for the measurement of the interaction between drug 'candidate' compounds and their desired or undesired biological targets have a critical role to play in this. Label free analysis approaches remain enduringly popular, as they can provide a direct measure of these interactions; at the current time these approaches involve optical detection using precision instrumentation. Drawbacks of the current state of the art include high instrumentation and operating costs and limited sample throughput (the number of 'candidate' compounds that can be measured in a day). Non-optical detection approaches can also be considered. This project aims to introduce a disruptive technology approach for label free analysis, based on the use of organic thin film transistor (OTFT) biosensors, where the detection is electrical in nature. OTFT offers a route to low cost fabrication of biosensor arrays, inspired by low temperature, additive fabrication methods originally designed for the consumer electronics industries. Electrical detection using OTFT promises to disrupt the label free analysis market by dispensing with optical instrumentation and will enable massive parallelisation compared to current technologies, resulting in lowered costs and a step change in productivity for end users within the pharmaceutical industry. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of using OTFT biosensors for label free analysis, using exemplifying systems selected for their relevance to the drug discovery process.