Enmolekyldetektion för precisionsdiagnostik av cancer

Forskningsprojekt, 2020 – 2025

Measuring cancer biomarkers is critical to improving treatment and survival of cancer patients. Cancer biomarker detection is today technically demanding, does not allow different types of analytes to be measured simultaneously, and requires relatively large amounts of samples and enrichment. In this project, a cross-disciplinary team, including world-leading experts in cancer biomarkers, bioanalytical sensing, and nanotechnology, will develop and implement a platform for direct optical detection of cancer biomarkers, with single-molecule sensitivity and competitive limit of detection (LOD). This will be enabled by recent discoveries, in which semiconductor nanowires (NWs) act like optical fibers that collect, guide and directionally emit light from surface-bound fluorophores. Functionalizing the NWs such that the binding of a fluorescent molecule signals the presence of a unique biomarker has in preliminary experiments offered single-molecule sensitivity and a tenfold contrast enhancement compared to conventional flat surfaces, with a corresponding improvement in LOD. The NW-concept will be further optimized for the detection of mRNA at the single-cell level as well as cell-surface biomarkers, offering discoveries of new biomarkers that previously escaped identification and eliminating the need for amplification. In this way, we hope to set a new standard for how cancer biomarkers will be discovered and measured in the future to improve cancer diagnostics and treatment.