Description du projet
Un laboratoire sur puce révolutionnaire pour le diagnostic du cancer
Les cellules tumorales circulantes (CTC), transportées dans tout le corps par la circulation sanguine, sont responsables de la métastase du cancer. Le projet BIOCELLPHE, financé par l’UE, propose de générer des bactéries de synthèse capables d’identifier et de se lier à des protéines cibles spécifiques à la surface des CTC, déclenchant la production de signaux chimiques identifiables à l’aide d’une très haute sensibilité via la diffusion Raman exaltée de surface (SERS, pour «surface-enhanced Raman scattering»). La SERS est une technique analytique qui emploie des nanoparticules plasmoniques comme activateurs optiques pour l’analyse chimique ultrasensible à l’échelle de détection d’une seule molécule. Les chercheurs créeront un dispositif SERS de laboratoire sur puce pour l’identification et le phénotypage multiplexe ultrasensibles des CTC. Cette initiative ouvrira la voie à une nouvelle ère de diagnostics médicaux, pour un nouveau paradigme biologique et biomédical.
Objectif
BIOCELLPHE provides frontier scientific and technological advancements to generate a breakthrough technology realizing the identification of proteins (i.e. phenotyping) as diagnostic biomarkers at single-cell level with unmatched sensitivity, multiplexing capabilities and portability. BIOCELLPHE proposes the generation of engineered bacteria able to recognize and bind to specific protein targets on the surface of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) responsible for cancer metastasis, thereby triggering the production of chemical signals that can be detected simultaneously, and with extremely high sensitivity by surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). SERS is a powerful analytical technique that employs plasmonic nanoparticles as optical enhancers for ultrasensitive chemical analysis achieving single-molecule detection level. BIOCELLPHE will implement these advancements toward the generation of an optofluidic lab-on-a-chip SERS device enabling ultrasensitive identification and multiplex phenotyping of CTCs. We anticipate that BIOCELLPHE long-term vision and scientific breakthrough will lead to a sky limit technology that will be widely applicable, not only in the diagnostic arena, but also in many other applications (e.g. biomedical, environmental). No one has previously been able to attempt this vision due to current challenges and technical limitations, but we believe to be in a position to pave a way for achieving this now. To realize this highly ambitious project, BIOCELLPHE gathers a highly multidisciplinary community of leading experts in synthetic biology, nanotechnology, plasmonics, microfluidics, artificial intelligence, and cancer diagnosis. We believe that successful deployment of BIOCELLPHE has the potential to usher in a new era of medical diagnostics and it will provide new paradigms in biology and biomedicine, advancing frontier science and technologies at the European academic and industrial sectors.
Champ scientifique
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsfluid mechanicsmicrofluidics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencessynthetic biology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncology
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Programme(s)
Régime de financement
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinateur
36310 Vigo Pontevedra
Espagne