Whispering Gallery Modes (WGM) for label free bioanalytics

Project Information

WhisperSense

Grant agreement ID: 837028

DOI

10.3030/837028

Project closed

EC signature date 20 December 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 30 June 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

Surflay Nanotec GmbH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WhisperSense (Whispering Gallery Modes (WGM) for label free bioanalytics)

Reporting period: 2019-01-01 to 2019-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

“According to the latest industry research, about 90 percent of drugs that reach clinical stage development never make it to FDA approval and commercialisation; the same applies to diagnostic markers.” One crucial point is that usually, in the early stage of drug development and biomarker identification, reliable data can only be obtained in artificial, extremely well-defined environments (purified binding partners, no complex biological matrices). However, the data obtained in this way did not take the native environment into account delivering false positive or false negative results. For that reason, the development and identification of new drugs and biomarkers takes a long time, and patients cannot be helped. Thanks to an innovative, proprietary particle-based approach using the physical effect of Whispering Gallery Modes (WGM), Surflay Nanotec GmbH is able to overcome most of these limitations. Our WGM system “WhisperSense” will allow a direct, real-time and spatially well-resolved interaction and concentration determination in cell cultures. Furthermore, direct full kinetic characterisation in the natural environment will be possible for cell culture microfluidic chips (organ-on-a-chip).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the course of the SME I action, Surflay Nanotec GmbH improves the business plan and gets further information of the performance by a benchmark study. It could be demonstrated that kinetic measurements of antigen and antibody interactions perform by the WGM-instrument as good as by the SPR-measurement (Biacore T200 instrument).
The SME I tool made it possible to conduct a survey among manufacturers and users of organ-on-a-chip systems to find out what technology we would be offering in the future. It turned out that there is a massive lack of online analytics for cell culture and organ-on-a-chip experiments.
Another important result of the SME I tool was the detailed further development of the financial plan for the next 5 years. All the information and results obtained led to the finalisation of the existing business plan.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The WGM measurement method based on fluorescent microparticles will greatly improve the information depth of cell culture experiments and organ-on-a-chip systems.
In the future, it will be possible to detect the expression level of individual proteins and track it online.
In particular, this will accelerate and improve the identification, testing and development of new drugs for the pharmaceutical industry.

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