A schematic showing graphene-gold hybrid nanoarray for nucleic acid detection and cellular biosensing
Invention Summary:
Raman spectroscopy is a nondestructive, label-free technique that uses laser light to discriminate cell and tissue types. While Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has demonstrated great potential to analyze a variety of bio/chemical molecular interactions within cells in a highly sensitive and selective manner, the main challenge is to ensure high sensitivity and selectivity, while achieving uniform signal enhancement and high reproducibility for the quantitative detection of targeted biomarkers within a complex stem cell microenvironment.
Rutgers Scientists have developed an innovative surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) based sensing platform using graphene coated-homogenous plasmonic metal (Au) nanoarrays, which synergize both electromagnetic mechanism (EM)- and chemical mechanism (CM)-based enhancement for sensitive and reproducible detection of Raman signals. This technology can be used for high-quality and high throughput bio/chemical molecule screening assays as well as to understand cellular phenomena such as disease progression and stem cell differentiation. In a proof-of-concept study, it was demonstrated that the progression of differentiation of stem cells into neurons can be tracked using specific mRNAs markers.
Market Applications:
- Detect and quantify specific biomarker levels
- Screening for various bio/chemical molecules
- Diagnosis of bacterial, fungal, viral infections
Advantages:
- Simple, rapid and accurate sensing platform
- Highly sensitive
- Large-scale detection of target samples
- Modular for any target sequences/biomarkers
Intellectual Property & Development Status:
Patent pending. Available for licensing and/or research collaboration.
Publications:
Yang L, Lee JH, Rathnam C, Hou Y, Choi JW & Lee KB (2019). Dual-Enhanced Raman Scattering-Based Characterization of Stem Cell Differentiation Using Graphene-Plasmonic Hybrid Nanoarray. Nano letters, 19(11), 8138-8148.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03402
