The development of new analytical tools as point-of-care biosensors is crucial to combat the spread of infectious diseases, especially drug-resistant organisms, or to detect biological warfare agents. Glycans (sugars) mediate a diverse range of biological recognition and signal transduction pathways and are implicated in diseases such as cancer (aberrant glycosylation) or as sites for pathogen adhesion making them appealing targets for biosensors. Glycosylated gold nanoparticles have been developed that change color from red to blue upon interaction with carbohydrate-binding proteins and may find use as biosensors.<br/><br/>Here the use of RAFT polymerization to develop glycosylated multivalent probes of glycan function, and their translation to point-of-care diagnostics for infectious disease is demonstrated. RAFT polymerization enables the easy access to hetero-telechelic polymers with a glycan attachment site at one end, and a thiol at the other to enable facile immobilization onto gold nanoparticle surfaces. Homogeneous and heterogeneous (&gt; 2 different glycans) nanoparticles have been assembled. The impact of particle size, polymer linker length and glycan nature, density and homogeneity on the recognition and binding of toxins such as the cholera toxin and ricin (a biological warfare agent) and viruses is probed. Furthermore the color change in response to the correct glycan-lectin pairing can be determined not only spectrophotometrically but by using the simple combination of a mobile phone camera and image analysis freeware, providing an ultra-low cost route to biosensors.

Precision glycopolymer-coated gold nanoparticles for the detection of toxins and viruses

256th National Meeting (2018)

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