Portable nanofluidic aptamer-SERS instrument for measurement of chemical exposure

 描述（由申请人提供）：该NIH-SBIR II期工作的目标是开发一种新的床旁（POC）检测平台和方法，用于评估人体暴露于血流中的有害环境化合物。由于这些化学物质进入体内的运输机制，它们的不同稳定性和消除很难建模，因此在体内而不是在环境中测定这些化合物要简单得多。在我们的方法中的主要创新是，一种新的光学微纳米流体设备将被使用沿着与独特的适体和拉曼报告分子，同时测量几类化合物在一个多路复用的方式。光流体设备是一种非常敏感的表面增强拉曼光谱（Sers）纳米通道盒，由德克萨斯A&M大学的Jun Kameoka和Gerard Coté教授发明。适体功能化化学以及整体集成产品将在BioTex，Inc.开发。与姊妹公司Base Pair Biotechnologies发现的适体相结合。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飞摩尔或更低水平的目标。如第一阶段所示，系统的各个组件已经过彻底测试，因此第二阶段的研究将侧重于工程集成和整体系统性能的演示。所采用的共振-SERS报告和纳米流体浓缩器具有提供超过标准荧光的数量级改进的灵敏度的潜力，并且没有ELISA或诸如色谱法和质谱法的完整分析化学分析的复杂的多步骤任务。使用适配体几乎任何环境化合物的关注，完全开发的平台将能够提供定量的“即时”或现场结果在几分钟内。

 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.