Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Healthcare resources and access are increasingly challenged in Canada and other countries due to changing demographics, fiscal constraints, and global conjunctures. This complexifies the fundamental goal of continuously improving patient outcomes and overall population health. A powerful avenue consists of growing our ability to provide fast diagnostic and genetic tests "on the spot”, in non-laboratory settings. This is referred to as point-of-care testing. It contrasts with sending samples to centralized laboratories and receiving the results days later. Imagine detecting a range of infectious diseases with a single home test, identifying carcinomas at the doctor’s office, or determining at the pharmacy the best drug for a given condition based on one’s genome; the advantages would be enormous. This Canada Research Chair in Advanced Photonic Sensing Components and Systems aims to develop breakthrough photonic technologies to dramatically increase our point-of-care arsenal. This research program will leverage the probing power of photonics to interrogate complex samples and will develop advanced fiber optic components and systems to do just that. In particular, this research will use lasers to inscribe periodic structures called Bragg gratings inside the core of optical fibers, often coated with nanoparticles and biomolecules, in order to precisely control light for sensing and more. Fibers have inherent advantages such as low cost, compactness, and remote operation. Numerous fiber biosensors have been developed, but current technologies have yet to shine significantly outside academic laboratories due to a number of limitations, such as the complexity of the accompanying instrumentation required. One of the unique aspects of this research program is that it will, for the first time, develop devices that integrate multiple passive and active functionalities, deploying the capabilities of an entire laboratory on a single fiber. For instance, we plan to amplify and detect multiple DNA sequences in saliva samples in minutes. All the key functions – fluorescence excitation and detection, precise heating, and temperature monitoring – will be performed by the device itself with only in-fiber light, within a passive cartridge. In short, we will truly build complex lab-on-fibers, achieving unprecedented control and performance while dramatically decreasing point-of-care deployment costs.