Abstract :
Clinical diagnosis is essential for the identification of infectious diseases like malaria, hepatitis, etc. Effective clinical diagnosis depends on the experience of the clinician as well as the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic tools and protocols used. Biosensors have been used in clinical analysis since the past three decades. Ideal characteristics of such tools are that they be sensitive, specific, reproducible, fast, reusable, user friendly and inexpensive. In caseof biosensors, which are devices that couple biological sensing elements to transducers in order to generate a signal in response to a specific analyte, such qualities, especially specificity, maybe achieved with suitable design.
The rapid progress in the microfabrication technologies, driven by demand for smaller and cheaper electronics, has aided in the advancement of technologies to miniaturize sensors as well, particularly since some of the microfabrication methods have been adopted for use with polymers and other materials besides silicon and its derivatives. As a result it is now possible to develop processes for mass production of optical devices with sub-wavelength dimensions. This research describes one such configuration which may be suitably adapted for use in sensing biological molecules. The objective of this work was to design and develop a label-free optical biosensor based on the principles of Guided Mode Resonance Filters (GMRF). Although some effort has been made towards development of such sensors elsewhere, they rely on expensive material like quartz as a substrate. This study was aimed at establishing new, cost effective sensing schemes to detect antigen-antibody interaction on the surface of the sensor (i.e. develop a GMRF based immunosensor). The research includes the selection of the material, fabrication of the nano dimensional optical GMRF device, surface modification, protein immobilization, theoretical analysis and characterization of the fabricated biosensor for detection.
In summary, the work presented covers with all aspects of a biosensor development including theoretical modeling, material selection, design, fabrication and characterization. With proper development of associated instrumentation this biosensor shows promise to be useful for health and environmental analysis.
About Speaker :
Dr. Gajanan Nagare has completed his BE from Dhule and ME from COEP. He has completed his PhD from IIT Bombay in Biomedical Engineering and has more than 11 years of expereince in the field. He is currently Associate Professor and Head of Dept of Biomedical Engineering at VIT, Mumbai. He also had been Post Doctoral Fellow at Univeristy of Alberta, Canada.