Photoelectrochemical Workstation for Biosensing Research

生物传感器是检测生物相关分析物的存在、不存在和/或量的装置。手持式和可穿戴式生物传感器被设想通过实现以患者为中心的临床决策和自我健康监测来提高医疗保健的质量和可及性，并允许更有效地使用医疗保健资金。如今的手持式电化学生物传感器被广泛用于监测血糖水平;然而，没有市售的手持式生物传感器用于监测生物分子分析物如核酸。核酸分析的困难在于，在存在大量生物背景物质的情况下，它们以低浓度存在。为了达到临床样品分析所需的飞摩尔检测限，必须提高电化学生物传感器的灵敏度和信噪比。 我们提出了提高信噪比的电化学生物传感器取代通常的电激发和电化学电流测量与光子激发和电化学电流测量。这种光电化学策略已被证明通过允许在零或低施加电压下进行电流测量来降低电化学系统的信噪比。更具体地说，该提案的重点是提高对使用光电化学和等离子体纳米颗粒的系统中光电化学信号产生的理解。这些纳米颗粒之间的距离可以在特定DNA靶标的存在下变化，这提供了用于感测这些生物分子的策略。 所要求的设备将使我们能够进行高质量的光电化学测量，以更好地了解DNA介导的光电化学信号的变化。这将使我们能够开发一种新的无标记光电化学生物传感器，用于手持和连续监测系统。在这一新兴研究领域的高质量研究将使我们能够贡献将在高影响力期刊上发表的新知识，并将吸引（1）高素质的HQP并为他们提供世界级环境中的培训，（2）将这种新的传感策略整合到生物传感系统中的行业合作，以及（3）与麦克马斯特大学的世界级合作。这为我们提供了将加拿大置于光电化学生物传感研究前沿的机会。

Biosensors are devices that detect the presence, absences, and/or quantity of biologically-relevant analyte. Handheld and wearable biosensors are envisioned to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare by enabling patient-centered clinical decision making and self-health monitoring, and allow healthcare funds to be used more effectively. Today’s handheld electrochemical biosensors are widely used for monitoring blood glucose level; however, there is no commercially available handheld biosensor for monitoring biomolecular analytes such as nucleic acids. The difficulty in nucleic acid analysis is that they are available in low concentrations in the presence of a large amount of biological background material. To achieve the femtomolar limit of detection required for analyzing clinical samples, it is essential to improve the sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio of electrochemical biosensors. We propose to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of electrochemical biosensors by replacing the usual electrical excitation and electrochemical current measurement with photonic excitation and electrochemical current measurement. This photoelectrochemical strategy has been shown to reduce the signal-to-noise of electrochemical systems by allowing current measurements to be performed at zero or low applied voltages. More specifically, the proposal is focused on improving the understanding of photoelectrochemical signal generation in systems that use photoelectrochemical and plasmonic nanoparticles. The distance between these nanoparticles can be varied in the presence of specific DNA targets, which provides a strategy for sensing these biomolecules. The requested equipment will enable us to perform high quality photoelectrochemical measurements to better understand the DNA-mediated changes in the photoelectrochemical signal. This will allow us to develop a new class of label-free photoelectrochemical biosensors for use in handheld and continuous monitoring systems. High quality research in this emerging research area will allow us to contribute new knowledge that will be published in high impact journals, and will attract (1) high caliber HQP and provide them with training in a world-class environment, (2) industry collaborations for integrating this new sensing strategy into biosensing systems, and (3) world-class collaborations to McMaster University. This provides us with the opportunity to place Canada at the forefront of photoelectrochemical biosensing research.