Idea to Innovation Phase 1: Development of stable, field-deployable silver-based surface plasmon resonance biosensors

金被广泛用作生物传感材料，因为它具有生物相容性，抗氧化性，并具有较大的表面等离子体（SPR）效应，这是用于检测生物分子的常用方法。然而，黄金是所有贵金属中最昂贵的，它的开采对环境的破坏很大。银和铜比金便宜几个数量级，在基于spr的生物传感中分别具有更高或相似的灵敏度。然而，这些金属没有被广泛应用，主要是因为生物分子与银和铜的界面困难，以及这些金属对氧化的敏感性。值得注意的是，银比金具有更大的SPR效应，这将使它不仅更便宜，而且在基于SPR的生物传感中也更敏感。如本文所述，我们将利用克鲁登和霍顿实验室的最新发现，设计基于银和铜的生物传感器，这些传感器很容易与生物分子接触，并且抗氧化。这些新的生物传感器将大大降低成本，并提高SPR生物传感在即时诊断中使用的可能性，因为银或铜基传感器芯片将是一次性的。有效的银或铜SPR芯片还将在耗材成本存在问题的地区开辟新市场，例如南美和印度的新兴市场。affinit<e:1>仪器公司是一家加拿大SPR系统制造商，也是我们技术的潜在客户，他们对低成本生物传感器的开发非常感兴趣，因为他们的主要关注领域是即时诊断，而目前的传感器在这个市场上的价格过高。我们实验室目前的技术还没有达到足够先进的水平，无法让这家公司或其他潜在客户进行评估，但有了这笔拨款的资金，我们将能够充分推进技术，开始与潜在客户进行产品评估。BioNavis是一家位于芬兰的潜在客户，对SPR的替代金属非常感兴趣，也同意支持这一提议，并对本文提出的扩大非金基生物传感器市场的可能性充满热情

Gold is widely employed as a material for biosensing since it is biocompatible, resistant to oxidation, and has a large surface plasmon (SPR) effect, which is the common method used to detect biomolecules. However, gold is the most expensive of all noble metals and its extraction is highly damaging to the environment. Silver and copper are orders of magnitude cheaper than gold and have a higher or similar sensitivities in SPR-based biosensing, respectively. However, these metals are not widely employed due primarily to difficulties interfacing biomolecules with silver and copper, and the sensitivity of these metals to oxidation. It is notable that silver has a substantially greater SPR effect than gold, which would make it not just cheaper but also much more sensitive in SPR-based biosensing. As described herein, we will design biosensors based on silver and copper that are easily interfaced with biomolecules and are resistant to oxidation by taking advantage of recent discoveries in the Crudden and Horton labs. These new biosensors will dramatically decrease costs and improve the likelihood that SPR biosensing could be used in point-of-care diagnostics since silver or copper-based sensor chips would be disposable. Effective silver or copper SPR chips will also open up new markets in areas where consumable costs are an issue, such as emerging markets in South America and India. Affinité Instruments, a Canadian manufacturer of SPR systems and a potential customer of our technology, is very much interested in the development of low-cost biosensors as their primary area of focus is point-of-care diagnostics and current sensors are prohibitively priced for this market. The current technology from our lab is not at a sufficiently advanced level for evaluation by this company or other potential customers, but with funds from this grant, we will be able to advance the technology sufficiently to start product evaluations with potential customers. BioNavis, a potential customer based in Finland with extensive interest in alternative metals for SPR have also agreed to support this proposal and are enthusiastic about the possibility of expanding the market for non-gold-based biosensors as proposed herein.**