Fluorescent dyes and proteins are great—except when they’re not. Colloidal semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are excellent alternatives for fluorescent dyes—except when they’re not. With the wide and growing variety of luminescent materials available, no single material is best-suited to every application. This presentation will overview our research in developing methods of bioanalysis that leverage QDs and other luminescent nanomaterials to achieve capabilities that are both suited to the nanomaterial and not possible with fluorescent dyes or proteins alone. These include smartphone-based platforms for biomolecular and cell-based assays, as well as single-vector multiplexed concentric FRET probes toward cellular sensing. Special attention will be paid to our ongoing development of multifunctional composites of QDs and magnetic or plasmonic nanoparticles. The optical properties of these composites overcome the deficiencies of a smartphone for fluorescence measurements without requiring sophisticated engineering. With the composite nanoparticles and a simple 3D-printed device, we are able to isolate and count HER2-positive cancer cells against a background of HER2-negative cells. This work is now moving toward barcoded assays for multiplexed cell detection, cell-surface antigen profiling, and single-analyte detection on a smartphone. A primary goal of our research is to develop materials and devices that make molecular medicine more accessible, whether at the bedside or in remote or low-resource settings.

Not everybody dyes: Leveraging quantum dots and other luminescent nanomaterials for new opportunities in bioanalysis

2019 Fall National Meeting

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