Plasmonic-enhanced Fluorescence for Rapid, Multiplexed Diagnostics

The COVID-19 pandemic and other recent disease outbreaks have illustrated the need for rapid and accurate diagnostic tests. While nucleic acid (PCR) and lateral flow (antigen) tests are now ubiquitous, these tests are not capable of highly multiplexed detection of multiple targets, and in the case of lateral flow tests, often lack accuracy. My research group has leveraged surface plasmon resonance based technologies to demonstrate highly multiplexed antibody-based detection for COVID-19 infection and immunization, and a rapid, highly accuracy / high sensitivity test for Lyme disease. Our grating-coupled fluorescent plasmonics (GC-FP) biosensor platform is based on a nanoscale plasmonic grating fabricated using advanced semiconductor processing methods. The platform measures surface-based molecular interactions for multiple targets in a single sample, and provides a quantitative, linear response. Beyond multiplexed antibody detection, the GC-FP approach is also capable of direct antigen detection (in the context of COVID-19) and has proven useful in monitoring immunological response to previous viral infection and throughout the vaccination sequence. This presentation will cover the underlying principles of grating-coupled surface plasmon resonance and fluorescence-enhanced GC-FP multiplexed testing, as well as the development of multiple testing formats, ranging from microfluidics-based processing, to simple point-of-care formats, to alternative biomarker targets, including nucleic acid hybridization based assays and nucleic acid-protein interactions.