• Overall objective
The objective of this project is to develop a microfluidic based electrochemical platform focused on the development of inexpensive, accurate, and reliable POC diagnostic devices for bladder specific cancer biomarker detection with multiplexing capabilities and bring them to a pre-commercial stage. Electrochemical sandwich ELISA, branch of electrochemical immunoassay have been increasingly attractive for use in biosensing application due to its highly sensitive, label-free, and real-time multiplexed detection of biomolecules.
• Importance for society
Cancer is a life-threatening disease and its various types may affect almost any organ in human. Among various cancer types, Bladder cancer (BCa) is one of major cancer and affect over 70,000 people every year in the United States alone. One of the best approaches to improve cancer survival rate is to diagnose it at an early stage. In spite of the rapid explosion of new technology platforms, traditional optical ELISA is used in clinical practice, which is laborious, time-consuming, require large sample volume and suffer from low sensitivity. On the other hand, recently proposed electrochemical sensors, which promise easy operation, accuracy, high sensitivity, low cost and compact size mainly suffer from background signals, non-specificity and selectivity in clinical samples.
• Problem being addressed
In this project attempts were made to find solutions for key issues of non-specificity, sensitivity and selectivity in clinical samples for sensitive detection. Attempts were made to solve the key issues via separation of assay chamber and detection chamber with innovative surface chemistry and microfluidic design with electrochemical detection techniques. The project started with the fabrication of hair comb structured gold electrode followed by its characterization. The scope of the project includes development of biosensor platform via separation of assay chamber and detection chamber with innovative surface chemistry, microfluidic design and electrochemical detection techniques, Further it include immobilization of antibodies on the biosensor matrix, evaluation of sensor detection range, specificity study, and prototype development.
