Abstract

Digital Resolution Liquid Biopsy at the Point of Care

Brian Cunningham, Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

As clinicians seek improved methods for tailoring medical treatment to the specific needs of individual patients, research is revealing that an important reservoir of information relevant to gene expression, mutation burden, immune response, and pathogen exposure is available in the profile of biomolecules present in bodily fluids.  Because samples can be obtained non-invasively, so-called “liquid biopsies” enable testing for disease onset, measuring the effects of therapy, and monitoring for disease recurrence after treatment. As liquid biopsy approaches become more routine, they also offer the promise for monitoring metrics for health/wellness, quantifying the effects of nutritional regimens, and determining the effects of exposure to a variety of environments.  Practical realization of this goal is challenging due to the extremely low concentration of relevant biomolecules within complex fluids, and the desire to accurately quantify concentrations that can vary over several orders of magnitude.  For widespread adoption, it is important to develop simple assay methods with inexpensive instruments that can potentially be used at the point of care. This talk will describe ultrasensitive and highly selective biomolecular detection approaches developed by our team that achieve digital resolution detection of nucleic acid and protein biomarkers with rapid, single-step, room temperature workflows that do not require enzymatic amplification.  Utilizing photonic metamaterials in combination with novel biochemistry methods for biomarker recognition, we envision liquid biopsy approaches that can provide quantitative assessments for multiplexed targets in point of care settings.