Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

This proposal addresses challenges that Canada is facing presently and will face for the next few decades. As seen recently on the international scene, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases propagated by bacteria might threaten populations' health. To address these issues, Canada will need advanced biomedical technologies for early detection of infectious diseases in humans and animals. Detection of pathogenic bacteria is very important in various sectors like medical diagnosis, nosocomial infections, food safety, and biological war. In order to establish a prevention plan, or an effective intervention plan in the event of bacterial contamination, it is necessary to carry out a significant, specific and fast detection. Current tests require days and even weeks to confirm a diagnosis of the presence of a pathogen and other infectious diseases in a patient. The development of affordable diagnostic technologies, such as Point-of-Care Testing (POTC) devices, in the form of hand-held devices will provide for more timely and accurate test results. POTC is extremely interesting since it can be performed at the site of the patient care, such as in emergency rooms, battlefields, outpatient clinics, nursing homes, patients' homes or hospital bedside, with the result leading to possible change in the care of the patient. This project aims to develop bio- and microtechnologies that target extremely short diagnosis time combined with exceptional limit of detection. To this purpose we develop novel ultra-sensitive lab-on-chip bacterial sensors based on functionalized optical microcavities by phages. The sensitivity is reached through a thermo-optical effect that produces a shift in the optical resonance of the cavity. Since the cavity has an extremely high quality factor, the detection is therefore highly sensitive. In addition the detection does not require prior labeling of the analyte, reducing significantly the analysis time.