STTR Phase I: High Brightness Fluorophores for Bioscience Applications

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project will be to develop new fluorophores for use with flow cytometers to enable the detection and sorting of thousands of cells per second. The market opportunity for fluorophores that are important imaging reagents for biomedical research is significant and growing, and there is a growing demand for multi-color flow cytometers and other cell imaging technologies. The goal for this technology is to simplify the design and reduce the cost of next generation flow cytometers, enhance the attraction and popularity of flow cytometry by simplifying the operation procedures and reducing the ownership cost, create new market opportunity for flow cytometry manufacturers (instrument, and reagents), and enable wide spread use of flow cytometry in clinical labs that would promote more effective diagnosis of health disorders and thus allow earlier treatments. This STTR Phase I project proposes to create a platform technology that can enhance the fluorescence brightness of fluorophores by blocking the fluorescent quenching pathways. Ideally, the proposed technology would offer enhanced fluorescent brightness up to 250-1,000 times of existing fluorophores. The goal is to enhance the detection efficiency of flow cytometry by overcoming the drawback of spillover, reduce or eliminate the need of autofluorescence background compensation, enable scientists, engineers, and technicians to obtain better flow cytometry data at shorter overall durations, and allow the detection and sorting of low abundance cells especially those in stem cell research.