Coffee Ring Stain Diagnostics for Malaria.
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In collaboration with the Wright lab (Chemistry) the goal of this project is to develop a simple, low-cost diagnostic test for malaria infection suitable for locations that lack electricity, refrigeration and highly trained technicians. The idea is based on the phenomenon that causes coffee-ring stains on the kitchen counter: When a liquid like coffee that contains a suspension of fine particles evaporates from a flat surface, the particles tend to accumulate along the outer edge. The proposed malaria test consists of two liquids and specially treated glass slides. Liquid A is mixed with the blood sample. A drop of the mixture is placed on the glass slide and left to dry. Once it has dried, the slide is washed with liquid B. If the washing reveals a purple ring, the person is infected. If it washes clean, then the person is not.

Researchers: Trantum

Environmentally sensitive contrast agents for imaging proteolytic activity in human pathologies.
Over the past decade, a substantial body of research has produced a wide range of nanoscale contrast agents for interrogating microenvironments specific to human pathologies of interest, such as atherosclerosis and cancer. In these two cases, passive targeting of the contrast agents to sites of disease has been achieved through the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect, while active targeting has been achieved using methods such as the immobilization of antibodies, peptides, or other ligands on nanoparticles.

In order to achieve further site specificity, we are working on developing novel nanomaterials that respond in the presence of specific microenvironments, such as the proteolytic environment in tumors. Our active projects seek to achieve this goal on quantum dots, dendrimers, gold nanoparticles, and iron oxide nanoparticles, in order to develop a nanoparticle toolbox for use with a wide range of imaging modalities.

Researchers: Bell, Ortega, Scherer, Yu

Optimization of polyplex-based delivery of genes and siRNA to tumor cells.
Gene therapy has the potential to be an integral part of cancer treatment in the future by replacing mutated genes with the functional sequences. For example, the p53 gene is a tumor suppressor gene that often has a disrupted pathway in human cancers. p53 prevents damaged DNA from being replicated and passed on to daughter cells by either inducing apoptosis or by inhibiting the cell cycle. A mutation in this gene allows damaged DNA to be maintained and replicated, and therefore encouraging tumor growth.

Plasmid localization to the cell nucleus is a low probability event that contributes to inefficient transgene expression following nonviral gene delivery. To increase the specific delivery of plasmids, much effort has been devoted to the identification of nuclear targeting ligands. Currently reported nuclear targeting ligands are not tissue-specific. It is generally known that when a cell phenotype changes to malignant, the protein expression is modified. Our projects take advantage of this mechanism to identify nuclear targets specific for breast cancer cells.

Researchers: Lowe, Lowery

Quantum dots for the detection of analytes of interest in blood samples on a microfluidic device.
Establishing reliable, portable, inexpensive point-of-care medical diagnostics across the world is of increasing importance especially in developing countries. Over the past few years, microfabricated devices have seen many applications in this area because they enable the achievement of these criteria based on small device dimensions, reduced reagent consumption, and short assay run times. However, current designs generally suffer from a lack of scalability, with fabrication involving several rate-limiting steps that unfortunately drive up the cost of the devices.

Our group has published the use of a quantum dot-based optical agglutination immunoassay for the detection of blood-borne analytes (Soman & Giorgio 2008). This proof-of-concept immunoassay was performed on a research-grade flow cytometer. Our goal is to scale down the analyzer for this immunoassay in a way that can be suitable to point-of-care applications across the globe.

Researchers: