IT14. Nanophotonics for biological sensing: New tools for disease management

Nanoparticles conjugated with biomolecules are promising building blocks for assembly into nanostructured functional materials for developing biomarker platforms because of their size dependent optical and electrical properties. Nanoparticles and nanodevices enable study of a wide range of biological phenomena extending from biomolecular interactions such as protein-protein, antibody-antigen or DNA protein interactions mapping to early diagnosis of bacterial, fungal or viral diseases in plants. Recent advances in materials science, in particular the development of functionalized nanoparticles, united with advances in molecular imaging research, provide the impetus for the present explosion in nanobiotechnology imaging and diagnosis research. Key to those advances is the emergence of functionalized nanoparticles, particularly inorganic nanoparticles, semiconductor nanomaterials (QDs) that can be targeted specifically to antibody receptors, enzymes and other molecules of biological importance that can interact at the cellular level. Also, over the last few years there has been a great interest of high-resolution devices for in vivo imaging in animal models of human disease and high-throughput, i.e., microarray and combinatorial, techniques for generating new diagnostic and therapeutic targets and probes. Here, we discuss some new strategies in developing functionalized inorganic or semiconductor based nanomaterials for early disease diagnosis.