Project description
Innovative biomaterial imaging platform offers unprecedented insight into cells, bacteria and tissue
Rapidly visualising molecular changes in our organism would allow us to specifically target deadly cancer cells or take antibiotics before developing resistance. Combining femtosecond spectroscopy and digital holography, the ERC-funded PIRO project plans to develop the most suitable tool for identifying key cellular building blocks on the basis of their vibrational or chemical fingerprint. PIRO will produce a phototransient infrared holographic microscope called PIROscope that will combine femtosecond infrared excitation with visible readout to retrieve images with unprecedented speed, spectral observation window and spatial resolution. If successful, PIRO will help reveal molecular details of breast cancer tissue at high resolution and the metabolic activity of bacteria following antibiotics treatment.
Objective
Molecules are the fundamental building blocks of life: disease is intrinsically linked to molecular malfunction and, sometimes, a tiny molecular error in a single cell can kill an organism. Drugs, such as antibiotics, are designed to protect us: they rid us of pathogens by disrupting their molecular machinery. If unsuccessful, surviving bacteria might adapt to evade future attacks and a few resistant bacteria can cause great damage.
Everything mentioned above relies on specific molecular changes. A technique that could rapidly visualise them holds great promise: it would allow us to specifically target this one deadly cancer cell or adopt antibiotics treatment before resistance emerges. Vibrational imaging, which combines spatial cues with molecular resolution, is the prime-candidate for revealing this molecular stand-off:
Spontaneous Raman readily acquires broadband spectra but is too slow to interrogate large samples. Coherent Raman can measure them but lacks spectral resolution. Finally, Fourier transform infrared microscopy combines spectral resolution and speed but its spatial resolution is insufficient.
PIRO promises to deliver the necessary tool for the job by combining concepts from nonlinear ultrafast spectroscopy and digital holography. PIRO implements a novel vibrational imaging platform: a phototransient infrared holographic microscope (PIROscope). The PIROscope, inspired by our recently introduced ultrafast holographic microscope, combines femtosecond IR-excitation with visible readout to, ultimately, retrieve spectrally resolved quantitative images with an unprecedented combination of imaging speed, spectral observation window and spatial-resolution.
During PIRO we will implement the PIROscope and validate it for biomedical imaging. We will then use our edge over the state-of-the-art to take first steps towards PIRO-based diagnostics by high-resolution visualising breast cancer tissue and the metabolic activity of antibiotics-treated bacteria.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsmicroscopy
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsantibiotics
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncology
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsspectroscopy
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands