Fingerprinting of (cancer) cells using integrated nanophotonics and plasmonic nanopore sensing

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The technology we envisage will allow measuring the biochemical fingerprint of 100s of intercellular targets at the single cell level. From the sequencing of cancerous cells extracted from tumours, it is also known that the heterogeneity of cells is not only seen in their DNA sequence but also their contents. The combination of Nanophotonics and Nanopore based sensing as proposed here will be able to detect hundreds of targets simultaneously extracted from single cells. The main advantage of the combination of photonic sensing and single molecule based nanopore technique is the ultra-low sample amounts of femtomoles - orders of magnitude below the usual requirements of DNA microarray. In combination with microfluidics, we will detect as few as 1000 copies of a target molecule in a cell. The combination of label free optical scattering (DLS and SERS) with nanopores offer unprecedented increases information. The nanophotonic-nanopore-microfluidic system to be developed aims to detect a variety of small molecules and DNA/RNA fragments. This exploratory investigation will try to understand the different signatures that can be extracted from lysed cells that are cancerous or not, and the range of heterogeneity. The ability to fingerprint cell by cell is crucial.