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School of Physical and Chemical Sciences

Coded fluorescent micro and nano containers based on a novel photoconversion mechanism

Research Group: Center for Condensed Matter Physics
Full-time Project: yes

Funding

This project has been supported by the Faculty for Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) funding. If you wish to be considered for another funding route, please contact the supervisor [a.sapelkin@qmul.ac.uk].

Project Description

In the modern biomedicine and biology, there is a wide interest in and increasing demand to study dynamic behavior and responses to a variety of stimuli of individual cells, including in large populations. Examples include circulating tumour cells effects of cellular noise on heterogeneity of cellular populations, bet hedging in bacterial systems in response to external stress and as a source of antibiotic resistance. Today, a significant shift takes place towards early diagnostics and rapid therapy assessment in cellular cultures, however, there is currently no reliable approach that could be used to label individual cells (and other objects) of interest at will in situ, followed by discrimination and long-term tracking of individually labelled cells in a population.

As part of this project, we will develop a new labelling system with just such capabilities. The system will be based on recently demonstrated by us [https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c02767]  photoconversion of fluorescent dyes co-localized with carbon nanoparticles (CNPs), with the latter acting as a photocatalyst. The proposed approach requires a co-hosting platform suitable for CNP and dye localization as well as showing sufficient degree of biocompatibility together with the potential for targeting and cargo delivery. Within this project we will use porous silica nanoparticles (100-900 nm) as co-hosting platforms to control the proximity of CNPs and dyes. Crucially, the proposed new universal platform, that will determine the future of identification, labelling and tracking of cells and other microscopic living and artificial objects, will be supported by the data analysis and interpretation methodology based on our work in the dynamics of atomic and colloidal systems [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97124-7, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.023203]. This methodology will be used for fast identification of changes in cellular dynamics and their subsequent interpretation in the context of the diagnostic and therapy needs.

SPCS Academics: Dr Andrei Sapelkin