Magnetically-actuated, bead-enhanced silicon photonic immunosensor.

Magnetic actuation has been introduced to an optical immunosensor technology resulting in improvements in both rapidity and limit of detection for an assay quantitating low concentrations of a representative protein biomarker. For purposes of demonstration, an assay was designed for monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1), a small cytokine which regulates migration and infiltration of monocytes and macrophages, and is an emerging biomarker for several diseases. The immunosensor is based on arrays of highly multiplexed silicon photonic microring resonators.

Label-free virus detection using silicon photonic microring resonators.

Viruses represent a continual threat to humans through a number of mechanisms, which include disease, bioterrorism, and destruction of both plant and animal food resources. Many contemporary techniques used for the detection of viruses and viral infections suffer from limitations such as the need for extensive sample preparation or the lengthy window between infection and measurable immune response, for serological methods. In order to develop a method that is fast, cost-effective, and features reduced sample preparation compared to many other virus detection methods, we report the application of silicon photonic microring resonators for the direct, label-free detection of intact viruses in both purified samples as well as in a complex, real-world analytical matrix.

Sensitive on-chip detection of a protein biomarker in human serum and plasma over an extended dynamic range using silicon photonic microring resonators and sub-micron beads.

We demonstrate a three-step assay on a silicon photonic microring resonator-based detection platform that enables the quantitation of the cardiac biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP) over a dynamic range spanning six orders of magnitude. Using antibody-modified microrings, we sequentially monitor primary CRP binding, secondary recognition of bound CRP by a biotinylated antibody, and tertiary signal amplification using streptavidin-functionalized beads. This detection methodology is applied to CRP quantitation in human serum and plasma samples.