MSE PhD Prospectus Defense of Karthika Sankar

TITLE: DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTROCHEMICAL BIOSENSORS FOR THE DETECTION OF BIOMARKERS AND VIRAL DISEASES

ABSTRACT: Healthcare is in demand of novel technologies capable of real-time sensing to continuously monitor the state of patients. An important next step is to develop biosensors for continuous in-situ monitoring of biomarkers. To this end, the proposed research focuses specifically on the development of electrochemical mechanisms to transduce the response of allosteric transcription factor (aTF) to small molecules (or biomarkers) to an electronic readout. As a proof of concept, the research will focus to develop biosensors for biomarkers like progesterone (fertility management) and uric acid (gout). On the other hand, while the world awaits a vaccine dose for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, testing is a key pillar of disease containment, in addition to other strategies like contact tracing, distancing, and personal protective equipment. A truly transformative technology in the fight against COVID-19 would be a rapid and quantitative point-of-care (POC) test for SARS-CoV-2 with a low limit of detection and a high specificity. By leveraging the widespread success of glucometers, the proposed research will develop a technology to develop POC, quantitative detection of infectious diseases like H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, we aim for: 1) Development and refinement of an impedance based electrochemical mechanism to sense progesterone utilizing an aTF, 2) Validation and optimization of aTF-enzyme conjugates to detect progesterone and uric acid, and 3) Redesigning and application of a glucometer-based technology for selective, and quantitative detection of H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, these studies will test the hypothesis of a proof-of-concept biosensor device, superior in terms of analysis time, ease of use, detection limit, and specificity compared to current methods (e.g., chromatography for biomarkers/ molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases. The successful completion of the above research will serve as a platform for development of state of the art technologies for diagnostics applications.

COMMITTEE: ADVISORProfessor Mark Grinstaff, MSE/BME/Chemistry; Professor James Galagan, BME; Professor Scott Schaus, Chemistry; Professor Arien Furst, MIT Chemical Engineering

When 2:00 pm on Thursday, February 4, 2021
Location Zoom