Jasmine Sze

Research Interests: Micro/ Nanofluidcs fabrication, Nanopore sensing, Biosensors, Assay development, Development of low costs and portable PoC diagnostics devices

Aptamer based Molecular Point of Care(PoC) testing using Solid State Nanopore

£10’s billion are spent on research to improve health care each year and this include identifying human genomes involved in cancer; personalized therapeutics and medicine; improving sensitivity limit on the PoC testing for earlier treatment etc. There isn’t any accurate and inexpensive DNA/protein screening tool.

Nanopore sensing could overcome the problem and provide a rapid, label free and low cost analysis for nucleic acid and protein molecules. It’s a very powerful technique which allows DNA, DNA-protein and polypeptides to be analysed in sub-nanometre resolution and detect biomolecules at single molecule level. It monitors ion current passes when a charge molecule translocating through the sub-nanometre pore in an electric field. The change in ionic current will depend on size, geometry and charge of the molecules as well as the ion and liquid motion. The goal of the project is to be able to detect single protein molecules in a label free, low costs and ideally be able to screen different targets in a high throughput manner. By incorporating aptamer to the nanopipette, it will be a step forward to develop a lost costs multiplex PoC platform to screen aptamer/proteins.

Biography:

Jasmine completed her MSci Chemistry ( Master Thesis: Integrated fluorescence for point of care diagnostics) with Professor Andrew deMello at Imperial College London and upon completion; she joined Molecular Vision (now Abingdon Health Ltd) as Clinical Assay Scientist then promoted to Project Leader. She has worked on design and development of microfluidic based in vitro diagnostics tests using different optical detection methods including urinary albumin and creatinine, vitamin C, and multiplexed 3 assay panel measuring myoglobin, CK-MB and Troponin I in human serum/ whole blood, multiple myeloma in urine/ human serum. She has extensive experiences on design, construct and develop prototype for diagnosing and monitoring the biomarker in a fully integrated disposable way. Currently, she is working on her PhD with Dr. Joshual Edel and Professor Tony Cass.

Publication:

G.Ryu, J. Huang, O. Hofmann, C. Walshe, J. Sze, G. McClean, A. Mosley etc., Lab Chip, 2011 11, 1664-1670