Our efforts in Biointerface Science build upon a nonfouling —protein and cell resistant— polymer brush coating that we have developed. We use this polymer brush coating as the core —enabling— technology for a point-of-care protein microarray that we are developing—the D4 assay, in which all reagents needed to carry out a sandwich immunoassay are inkjet printed on the polymer brush. To accompany this new assay architecture, we are also developing passive microfluidics to encase the chip that allows the D4 assay to be carried out with minimal user intervention from single drop of blood, and a highly sensitive, low-cost, hand-held optical detector to image the microarray at the point-of-care.
Current projects with the D4 assay include Ebolavirus, COVID-19, hepatocellular carcinoma and breast cancer, and involve collaborators in Guatemala and Tanzania. We also continue to work in plasmonic sensing in collaboration with Prof. Maiken Mikkelsen in ECE.