OPTICAL WAVEGUIDE SENSORS FOR HIGHLY SENSITIVE DETECTION & QUANTIFICATION OF CYTOKINES IN BIOLOGICAL FLUIDS

细胞因子是我们体内负责控制炎症的蛋白质。当我们被细菌、病毒或化学物质感染，或者因烧伤或割伤而受损时，炎症反应就会发生。当我们生病时，我们血液中的细胞因子水平会增加。除了帮助身体抵抗感染、恢复和修复自身外，这些蛋白质还可以作用于大脑，导致行为发生变化，使我们更难清晰地思考、做出决定和与他人互动。即使我们大脑中的细胞因子水平很低，也会改变我们的行为。例如，细胞因子的极少数分子就可以改变一个神经元或一组或多个神经元的行为方式。为了更好地了解细胞因子如何改变我们的行为，我们必须能够在体液和组织中准确地测量它们，比如血液和大脑。然而，目前对我们可用的技术非常不敏感，只有在数百万分子同时存在的情况下才能检测到细胞因子。因此，我们需要开发更灵敏的生物学方法来检测这些蛋白质。已经开发了光波导传感器来检测低水平的环境污染物；例如，河流中女性性激素--雌激素的存在。这些传感器可以重复使用400次，是目前全球可用的最灵敏的生物传感器。重要的是要发现这项技术是否可以用于检测其他分子，特别是人体血液和组织等生物液中低拷贝蛋白质的检测。在这里，我们建议开发这些系统来检测低水平的细胞因子。这项技术的创造将对我们目前在炎症生物学和神经科学方面的研究非常有价值，对制药行业和临床，特别是在临床诊断学的背景下，应该具有重大价值。

Cytokines are the proteins in our bodies that are responsible for controlling inflammation. The inflammatory response occurs when we are infected by a bacterial, viral or chemical agent, or damage ourselves from either a burn or a cut. When we are sick we have increased levels of cytokines in our blood. As well as helping the body fight off infection, recover and repair itself, these proteins can act on the brain to cause changes in behaviour, making it more difficult for us to think clearly, make decisions and interact with others. Even very low levels of cytokines in our brain can change our behaviour. For example, a very few molecules of a cytokine can change the way in which a neurone, or a group or neurones, behaves. In order to better understand how cytokines can change our behaviour we must be able to measure them accurately in fluids and tissues of the body, such as blood and the brain. However, the techniques that are currently available to us are very insensitive, and can only detect cytokines when millions of molecules are present at once. Therefore we need to develop more sensitive biological methods for detecting these proteins. Optical waveguide sensors have been developed for the detection of low levels of environmental pollutants; for example, the presence of the female sex hormone, oestrogen, in rivers. These sensors can be reused 400 times and are currently the most sensitive biological sensors available worldwide. It is important to discover whether this technology can be used for the detection of other molecules, particularly low copy numbers of proteins in biological fluids, such as human blood and tissue. Here, we propose to develop these systems for the detection of low levels of cytokines. Creation of this technology will be very valuable for our current research in inflammation biology and neuroscience, and should be of significant value to the pharmaceutical industry and clinic, particularly in the context of clinical diagnositics.