Categories | Inventors
Nanoparticle Platforms for Sorting, Capture, and Placement of Cells
OHSU # 0955
Categories:
Inventors:
- Tania Vu, SM.Science & Engineering
Summary:
Technology Overview
Quantum dot (QD) NanoArrays have great potential to address many stringent criteria that are needed--such as highly sensitive, rapid, cell-accessible and cell-specific techniques--to detect and target chemical events occurring in nanometer-sized cellular structures.
Dr. Tania Vu has developed a specific method for creating printed arrays of individual nanoparticle probes capable of capturing, sorting and measuring interactions of single bioactive molecules, providing a multi-use, customizable platform for detection, visualization and further characterization. Quantum Dots (QDs) are synthetic semiconductors that naturally fluoresce at specific wavelengths. In QD NanoArrays these probes are individually placed, providing a simple method, sensitive enough to detect single interactions at each nanoparticle binding site. QDs provide unprecedented stable and bright intrinsic fluorescence, thus allowing visualization of individual binding events at each nanoparticle probe site using a conventional fluorescence microscope. This technique precludes variability introduced by signal amplification, a scheme typically used in conventional array methods to increase sensitivity.
Competitive Advantages
1) increased sensitivity: QD NanoArrays can detect single binding events, so that additional (noisy) signal amplification tags are not needed
2) quantifiable: discrete binding events (whether cells or even proteins) are visualized as fluorescence at each individual QD nanoparticle probe site using a simple fluorescence microscope
3) parallel, high-throughput: multiple types of cells can be detected on a single array allowing for relative comparison in a single sample
4) stable: QD NanoArrays can be archived without fading, allowing for re-scanning at a later time
5) The QD NanoArray Technology offers a cheap (as low as $50 for a QD array of 1 million sites / 1cm sq) and "tailor-made" device cutomizable to the consumer's requirement
6) QD fluorescence is exceedingly bright and photostable compared to conventional organic dyes. In in vitro and in vivo studies, QDs have proven not to undergo any significant bleaching and have enabled the monitoring of molecules in live cells for hours, days, weeks and months.
Market Summary
In addition, the rapid success of QDs for imaging cells and tissues in a variety of cellular systems and imaging modalities indicates the versatility and potential of the QD NanoArray to contribute to biomedicine. The biomarker diagnostic market is estimated to hit $2.9B by 2008. As a diagnostic product for specific detection of multiple low-concentration biomarkers for clinical disease, the QD NanoArray meets a critical market need: offering rapid parallel comparison of multiple proteins in same sample.
Patents:
| Patent Cooperation Treaty | Published |
For more information, contact:
Christopher Andon
Technology Development Manager
503-494-4185
