Fingerprinting of (cancer) cells using integrated nanophotonics and plasmonic nanopore sensing

我们设想的技术将允许在单细胞水平上测量100个细胞间靶标的生化指纹。从从肿瘤中提取的癌细胞的测序中，还已知细胞的异质性不仅在其DNA序列中可见，而且在其内容物中可见。这里提出的基于纳米光子学和纳米孔的传感的组合将能够检测同时从单个细胞提取的数百个目标。光子传感和基于单分子的纳米孔技术的组合的主要优点是超低的飞摩尔样品量-低于DNA微阵列的通常要求的数量级。结合微流体技术，我们将检测到细胞中靶分子的1000个拷贝。无标记光学散射（DLS和Sers）与纳米孔的组合提供了前所未有的信息增加。待开发的纳米光子-纳米孔-微流体系统旨在检测各种小分子和DNA/RNA片段。这项探索性研究将试图了解可以从癌性或非癌性裂解细胞中提取的不同特征，以及异质性的范围。一个细胞一个细胞的指纹识别能力至关重要。

The technology we envisage will allow measuring the biochemical fingerprint of 100s of intercellular targets at the single cell level. From the sequencing of cancerous cells extracted from tumours, it is also known that the heterogeneity of cells is not only seen in their DNA sequence but also their contents. The combination of Nanophotonics and Nanopore based sensing as proposed here will be able to detect hundreds of targets simultaneously extracted from single cells. The main advantage of the combination of photonic sensing and single molecule based nanopore technique is the ultra-low sample amounts of femtomoles - orders of magnitude below the usual requirements of DNA microarray. In combination with microfluidics, we will detect as few as 1000 copies of a target molecule in a cell. The combination of label free optical scattering (DLS and SERS) with nanopores offer unprecedented increases information. The nanophotonic-nanopore-microfluidic system to be developed aims to detect a variety of small molecules and DNA/RNA fragments. This exploratory investigation will try to understand the different signatures that can be extracted from lysed cells that are cancerous or not, and the range of heterogeneity. The ability to fingerprint cell by cell is crucial.