Project description
Lab-on-a-chip for pharmaceutical characterisation
Many chemical compounds including pharmaceuticals possess a geometric property known as chirality, whereby they exist in two forms which are mirror images of each other. Although the chiral molecules have the same chemical structure, their biological effect is different. This factor must be taken into consideration in pharmaceutical development, to avoid biotoxicity. In this context, the EU-funded TwistedNano project will develop a novel spectroscopy-based device that can identify the chiral nature of drugs under discovery. Despite using minute amounts of sample, the microfluidics chip will exhibit great sensitivity and speed at chirality sensing, ultimately advancing research and development efforts towards new medical drugs.
Objective
The quest for new medical drugs demands reliable, ultrasensitive and fast techniques to identify, refine and test small volumes of candidates for clinical trials. The efficacy of pharmaceuticals depends to a large extent on their chiral composition, and thus enantiomeric purity and selectivity is an important issue for the development of new drugs and to test their biotoxicity. TwistedNano addresses this need with a new generation of integrated nanophotonic devices enabling ultrasensitive chiroptical spectroscopy of sub-nanolitre volumes, revolutionizing at-source the sensing technological toolbox for drug discovery and nanomedicine.
Because of governmental regulations, agencies require pharmaceutical manufacturers to investigate systematically most of drug enantiomers to determine their safety/efficacy. Thus, the development of fast, compact and accurate chiral sensing on a chip is one of the current primary targets of the nanomedicine industry, constituting a growing market that is already exceeding 100 billion Euros. TwistedNano will result in a photonics-enabled chiral sensing technology that integrates vectorial structured light fields with almost arbitrary control onto a microfluidic chip, providing groundbreaking advantages compared to current instrumentation: (i) remote/distributed analysis, (ii) reduced sample consumption, (iii) cost reduction, (iv) parallelization, (v) increased diagnostic speed and sensitivity.
Key elements developed for optofluidic integration include photonic crystal fibers, photonic nanostructures, and metasurfaces operating in close synergy with cutting-edge chiroptical spectroscopic techniques. In the mid-term, TwistedNano will not only lay the foundations of a new lab-on-chip chiral sensing technology revolutionizing drug discovery, theranostics and nanomedicine, but also open a plethora of disruptive applications such as characterization of minute amounts of viruses and macromolecules in general.
Fields of science
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugs
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesmicrotechnologylab on a chip
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologynanomedicine
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynanophotonics
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
67100 L Aquila
Italy