Advanced Imaging Technology for Biochip Analysis

描述(由申请人提供)该Fast Track项目的主要目标是开发和商业化用于微阵列成像和量化的通用且廉价的基于CCD的系统。该系统的一个突出特点是能够进行时间门控成像，这将提供在某些底物(如薄膜)上有效抑制背景的好处，并增强对多路标记的识别。这项第一阶段研究的主要目标将是量化这些益处，评估这些益处对终端用户的价值，从而评估技术可行性，并确定商业开发时间门控成像系统是否合理。通过时间门控成像抑制背景需要使用特定的标记，其好处将在某些底物上最为明显。因此，该系统将在尼龙膜上使用长寿命荧光试剂进行测试。这一组合有望为目标应用程序提供出色的性能。同样重要的是，该系统应该能够同时成像两个标签。这可以通过单独的光谱过滤来完成，但我们将调查时间分辨成像是否显著增强了辨别能力。由于我们的目标是开发一种多功能系统，我们还将测试该系统的化学发光成像。我们预计，拟议的系统将能够在高结合容量的膜(如尼龙)上使用荧光标记进行高灵敏度的核酸微阵列杂交实验。由于高背景荧光和较差的放射性同位素检测空间分辨率，这些底物目前仅限于大阵列格式上的放射性同位素标记。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant)The broad objective of this Fast Track project is to develop and commercialize a versatile and inexpensive CCD-based system for microarray imaging and quantification. A differentiating feature of this system will be the capability to perform time-gated imaging, which will provide the benefits of effective background suppression on certain substrates such as membranes and enhanced discrimination of multiplexed labels. The primary objectives of this phase I study will be to quantify these benefits and to assess the value of these benefits to end users and hence to assess technical feasibility and to determine whether the commercial development of a time-gated imaging system is justified. Background suppression by time-gated imaging requires the use of specific labels, and its benefits will be most apparent on certain substrates. Thus, the system will be tested with long-lifetime fluorescent reagents on nylon membranes. This combination is expected to provide excellent performance for target applications. It is also essential that the system should be capable of the simultaneous imaging of two labels. This can be accomplished with spectral filtering alone, but we will investigate whether time resolved imaging significantly enhances discrimination. Because it is our objective to develop a versatile system, we will also test the system for chemiluminescent imaging. We anticipate that the proposed system will enable the use of fluorescent labels for high-sensitivity nucleic acid microarray hybridization experiments on high binding capacity membranes (e.g. nylon). These substrates are currently are limited to radioisotopic labels on macroarray formats because of high background fluorescence and the poor spatial resolution of radioisotopic detection.