Discovery platform for aptamer-based luminescent sensors for protein detection

Diagnostics are critical to our healthcare infrastructure, with substantial impacts on patient care and public health policy. Proteins have been used as diagnostic markers for disease monitoring for nearly 200 years, however, current analytical methods require expensive equipment and expert technicians. This restricts the use of such methods to centralized laboratories where they process samples sent from local collection facilities. Consequently, low resource areas experience limited diagnostic access and long wait times from sample to result. Cell-free technology uses purified biological components to enable transcription and translation in hours instead of days. This technology can be leveraged to develop low-cost, portable molecular diagnostics as these systems can be freeze-dried and distributed without a cold chain. The proposed project aims to leverage the principles of synthetic biology to establish a platform to rapidly discover aptamer-based luminescent sensors for biomarker detection, ultimately, such point-of-care systems could have major impacts on global health.

Faculty Supervisor:

Keith Pardee

Student:

Partner:

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Biotechnology; Other

University:

University of Toronto

Program: