Portable nanofluidic aptamer-SERS instrument for measurement of chemical exposure

 描述(由申请人提供)：NIH-SBIR第二阶段工作的目标是开发一种新的护理点(POC)检测平台和方法，用于评估人类对血液中有害环境化合物的暴露。由于这些化学物质进入体内的运输机制、它们不同的稳定性和消除很难建模，因此在体内而不是在环境中分析这些化合物要简单得多。我们方法的主要创新是，一种新颖的光学微纳流体设备将与独特的适配子和拉曼报告分子一起使用，以多路复用的方式同时测量几类化合物。这种光流控设备是一种极其灵敏的表面增强拉曼光谱(SERS)纳米通道盒，由德克萨斯A&M大学教授Jun Kameoka和Gerard Coté发明。适配子官能化化学以及整体集成产品将由BioTex公司开发，其姊妹公司Base Pair BioTechnologies将发现适配子。正在开发的设备在纳米通道的入口处提供等于或超过1014的信号增强，从而能够快速定量流体中的毫微摩尔或更小水平的靶。正如第一阶段所表明的那样，系统的各个部件都经过了彻底的测试，因此第二阶段的研究将侧重于工程集成和系统整体性能的演示。采用的共振SERS报告和纳米流体浓缩器有可能提供比标准荧光提高数量级的灵敏度，并且不需要复杂的多步骤任务的酶联免疫吸附试验或全分析化学分析，如层析和质谱学。将适体用于几乎任何令人关注的环境化合物，这个完全开发的平台将能够在几分钟内提供定量的“护理点”或现场结果。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this NIH-SBIR Phase II effort is to develop a new point-of-care (POC) detection platform and methodology for assessment of human exposure to hazardous environmental compounds in the bloodstream. Because the mechanisms of transport of such chemicals into the body, their differing stabilities, and elimination are difficult to model, it is much more straightforward to assay for these compounds in the body rather than in the environment. The primary innovations in our approach are that a novel optical micro-to-nano-fluidic device will be used along with unique aptamers and Raman reporter molecules to simultaneously measure several classes of compounds in a multiplexed fashion. The opto-fluidic device is an extremely sensitive surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) nanochannel cartridge that was invented at Texas A&M University by professors Jun Kameoka and Gerard Coté. The aptamer functionalization chemistry as well as the overall integrated product will be developed at BioTex, Inc. with aptamers discovered at sister company, Base Pair Biotechnologies. The device being developed provides signal enhancements equal to or exceeding 1014 at the entrance to the nanochannel, enabling rapid quantitation of femtomolar or smaller levels of targets in fluids. As demonstrated in Phase I, the individual components of the system have been thoroughly tested, and the Phase II study will therefore focus on the engineering integration and demonstration of overall system performance. The resonant-SERS reporting and nanofluidic concentrator employed have the potential to provide orders-of-magnitude improved sensitivity over standard fluorescence and without the complicated multistep tasks of ELISA or full analytical chemistry analysis such as chromatography and mass spectrometry. Using aptamers to virtually any environmental compound of concern, the fully-developed platform will be able to provide quantitative "point-of-care" or field results in a matter of minutes.