Grant: Idea to Innovation

Gold is widely employed as a material for biosensing since it is biocompatible, resistant to oxidation, and has a large surface plasmon (SPR) effect, which is the common method used to detect biomolecules. However, gold is the most expensive of all noble metals and its extraction is highly damaging to the environment. Silver and copper are orders of magnitude cheaper than gold and have a higher or similar sensitivities in SPR-based biosensing, respectively. However, these metals are not widely employed due primarily to difficulties interfacing biomolecules with silver and copper, and the sensitivity of these metals to oxidation. It is notable that silver has a substantially greater SPR effect than gold, which would make it not just cheaper but also much more sensitive in SPR-based biosensing. As described herein, we will design biosensors based on silver and copper that are easily interfaced with biomolecules and are resistant to oxidation by taking advantage of recent discoveries in the Crudden and Horton labs. These new biosensors will dramatically decrease costs and improve the likelihood that SPR biosensing could be used in point-of-care diagnostics since silver or copper-based sensor chips would be disposable. Effective silver or copper SPR chips will also open up new markets in areas where consumable costs are an issue, such as emerging markets in South America and India. Affinité Instruments, a Canadian manufacturer of SPR systems and a potential customer of our technology, is very much interested in the development of low-cost biosensors as their primary area of focus is point-of-care diagnostics and current sensors are prohibitively priced for this market. The current technology from our lab is not at a sufficiently advanced level for evaluation by this company or other potential customers, but with funds from this grant, we will be able to advance the technology sufficiently to start product evaluations with potential customers. BioNavis, a potential customer based in Finland with extensive interest in alternative metals for SPR have also agreed to support this proposal and are enthusiastic about the possibility of expanding the market for non-gold-based biosensors as proposed herein.*