Grant: Engage Plus Grants Program

Rapid diagnosis of human disease at the patient point-of-care is key to timely and effective treatment. Thisresearch project will explore the extent to which an advanced spectroscopic technique, known assurface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can be used to render a simple rapid vertical flow assay into amuch more powerful quantitative test. A quantitative rapid vertical flow assay, which this project seeks todemonstrate, would allow for earlier detection of human disease, and would allow for improved health caremonitoring (such as in determination of HIV viral load, etc). All of this would still be possible at the patientpoint-of-care, which would ensure rapid and effective disease treatment. Our recent Engage project is comingto an end, and we have made excellent progress on this front. Improved limit-of-detection and increasedselectivity have been illustrated, as well as guidelines for the production of stable and reproducible goldcolloids conjugated with both the capture agent and the Raman-active label. However, there is still much workto do, including pushing the limit of detection further through the exploration of other shapes / sizes ofparticles, as well as testing in biologically relevant matrices (i.e. serum). In addition, a robust data analyticsapproach is needed to advance the technology forward.