Inexpensive Add-on Plasmonic Patch to Enable Ultrasensitive and High-Dynamic Range Protein Microarrays

AbstractDetection and quantification of various proteins in biological fluids and tissues is of fundamental importance in biomedical research and clinical diagnostics because it is impossible to fully characterize complexnon linearbiochemical systems without being able to accurately and quantitatively interrogate the component moleculesThere is not a commercially available tool that allows researchers to quantitatively and simultaneously measure concentrations of target analyte proteins over concentrations that range many orders of magnitudeandgtand may fall below pg mLWeAuragent Bioscienceaim to commercialize a productwhich we call aPlasmonic Patchto address this needThe Plasmonic Patch enhances fluorescencelinked immunosorbent assaysFLISAto achieve performance to meet the aforementioned needandperhaps most importantlyit can do so by simply adding it on top of existing FLISAs without changing workflowsreagentsor readersWe have already demonstrated that the Plasmonic Patch can enhance the sensitivity of existing assays in the detection of several known biomarkers by more thanfoldIn the proposed effortwe seek to further optimize the physical composition of the Plasmonic Patch to achieve even greater fluorescence enhancementwhich will result in higher sensitivity and higher dynamic rangeSecondwe will purchase commercially available protein microarrays to show that the performance of these assays can be enhanced by orders of magnitude by simply placing the Plasmonic Patch on top prior to readoutUltimatelythe product we are creating based on the Plasmonic Patch will substantially increase the power of existing assaysallowing biomedical researchers and clinicians to better understand the pathological basis of health and disease by allowing them to interrogate relevant component proteins at a depth and breadth that is currently impossible with existing technologies Project Narrative Immunosorbent Assays are a staple of biomedical research and clinical diagnosticsHere we propose to optimize and validate a technology we callPlasmonic Patchthat can be used to significantly enhance the performance of Fluorescently Linked Immunosorbent AssaysFLISAwhile requiring neither extensive changes to existing experimental protocols nor the purchase of expensivespecialized equipment and reagentsThe Plasmonic Patch will allowing researchers and clinicians to better understand the basis of health and disease by providing an extremely powerfuleasy to useand inexpensive tool to interrogate biological systems