Nanoscale interface engineering towards clinical translation of optical biosensors

Speaker: Dr. Swarnapali De Silva Indrasekara, from the Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

When: 12:15pm, 2/17/2020

Abstract:

Optically active nanomaterials (NMs), in particular, gold nanomaterials have been widely explored as a next generation material for biomedical applications ranging from imaging to diagnosis and therapy. It is mainly due to their unique chemical, optical, and thermal properties. We use the extraordinary ability of NMs to concentrate light in a confined area that makes NMs highly sensitive to local environmental changes, thereby enabling NMs to act as nano-detectors. Using nano-detectors, we were able to selectively identify diseased cells from healthy cells and also to directly detect nucleic acid biomarkers of Malaria in blood with universally high sensitivity. Efficient clinical translation of NMs-based technologies requires not only their performance, but also their behavior in complex biological environments to be carefully controlled, optimized, and well-understood. I will share (i) what we have learned about the dynamic interactions at the nano-bio interfaces, and (ii) our initial on understanding NM interfaces using scattering spectroscopy and integrating that knowledge to design diagnostic biosensors.