EAGER: Integrating Optical Fiber Bridges in Microfluidic Devices for Ultrasensitive Analysis of Biomarkers in Single Cells

目前还没有可用于通过直接和快速分析关键生物标志物来监测患者对疾病触发因素（如空气中的刺激物和毒素）的生物反应的床旁检测平台。也没有用于监测生物流体样品中可能存在的传染病或癌症复发的平台。这种基于生物标志物的诊断可以在精准医学中有许多应用。这些设备可以为个体患者提供个性化的治疗策略。该项目将开发这样一种系统，该系统还将通过识别每年体检时采集的生物样本中的罕见异常细胞，对癌症的早期诊断有用。PI将开发用于单细胞分析的微流控设备，该设备采用平面外多模光纤，仅使用一个源和一个检测器即可产生三个激发点和三个检测点。 光将以隧道模式通过光纤传播，使得可以在光纤的端部处产生两个激发和检测点。将评价上样效率和底物特异性，并修饰肽序列以优化上样效率。

There are no Point of Care sensing platforms that are available to monitor a patient's biological response to disease triggers such as airborne irritants and toxins by direct and rapid profiling of critical biomarkers. There are also no platforms for monitoring the recurrence of an infectious disease or cancer that may be present in biofluid samples. Such biomarker-based diagnostics could have numerous applications in precision medicine. These devices could lead to personalized treatment strategies for individual patients. This project will develop such a system that will also be useful for the diagnosis of cancers in early stages by identifying rare aberrant cells in biological samples taken during annual physical examinations.The PIs will develop a microfluidic device for single cell analysis that incorporates an out-of-plane multimode optical fiber to generate three excitation and three detection points using only one source and one detector. Light will be propagated through the fiber in a tunneling mode so that two excitation and detection spots can be generated at the end of the fiber. The efficiency of loading and substrate specificity will be evaluated, and peptide sequences modified to optimize loading efficiency.