The Attogram Project
Aim
The pharmaceutical industry has identified a need to extend its HTS capacity three-fold to provide better quality target screening for drug discovery. This research aims to develop the technology required for a ten-fold increase in screening capacity and improve the quality of the data recovered from each investigation. But our new basic technology will do more than discover drugs, it will open a new way of doing research - data driven discovery - that will revolutionise fundamental biology, diagnosis and medical therapy using genomic and post-genomic bioinformatics.
Objectives
1. Develop the technology for a HTS 1024 x 1024 pixelated 2D-SPR imaged, bio-addressable array;
2. Develop the technology for a 2D CMOS imaging camera with 1GHz temporal resolution, with a 10 nW light level at each pixel;
3. Interrogate the fabricated array with evanescent wave cavity ring-down spectroscopy (e-CRDS), differential phase surface plasmon resonance (d-SPR) and fluorescence enhanced imaging (f-EI) in real time;
4. Fabricate gold surfaces with nanostructured architecture to produce localised plasmon enhancement sensitivity;
5. Apply the attogram ml-1 sensitivity to DNA array screening, for mutation detection and disease markers and pharmacokinetic data on protein - ligand binding;
6. Demonstrate a proof-of-principle combinatorial chemistry library screening.