LIFE SCIENCES & DIAGNOSTICS

Field Deployable, Upconverting crystal Diagnostic Platform for Chemical & Biological Detection

Intelligent Material Solutions supplies materials, reagents, assays, and licensable crystal platform technologies for life science diagnostics. Based on the patented versatile crystals, IMS products address Point-of-Care (POC) in-vitro diagnostics, medical and life science imaging, and field-based environmental monitoring.

Why Intelligent Material?

The fundamental building blocks of Intelligent Material Solutions are uniform and mono-disperse crystals. The crystals can be configured to accommodate a diverse set of surface ligands – amino groups, carboxyl groups, organic-soluble groups and non-reactive modifications. The crystals are compatible with established detection and sample preparation methods - bead or microsphere, slide or chip array, probe, microtiter plate, and lateral flow.

Small Size and Variability

Patented particle synthesis methods result in mono-disperse crystals as small as 3 nm tunable up to 50,000 nm.

Morphology Control

The ability to control aspect ratios allows production of photonic crystals in any shape: Rods, Spheres, Hex Plates, etc.

Linkable to Molecules

Crystals may be conjugated to molecules that interface with nucleotides, receptors, proteins, and other biomolecules.

Stable in Aqueous Solutions

Patented crystals contain a protected core that enables use in biological applications as the crystals are stable in aqueous environments.

Material Advantages

  • Biocompatibility with cell and tissue samples, improved target-to-reporter ratio, and particle density dependent sensitivity

  • Surface chemistries accommodate the breadth of biomarkers – amino groups, carboxyl groups, organic-soluble and non-reactive

  • Products address a wide range of bioassays - molecular diagnostics, immunoassays, flow cytometry, and cell and tissue microscopy

  • Functional integration with additional imaging and separation modalities– i.e., magnetic separation and labeling, multiple imaging  modalities including X-ray and Computed Tomography (CT)

IMS in Action

Intelligent Material Solutions facilitates and expedites the end-user assay development process from fundamental research to innovative diagnostics and therapeutics.

In Vitro Diagnostics

IVD products address applications that require high-sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility, low test cost, and low equipment demand. Target applications also benefit from simultaneous detection of multiple markers from one sample, broad dynamic range, and quantitation. Target segments include Nucleic Acid Assays, Point-of-Care, Immunoassays, and Flow Cytometry.

Non-Amplified Nucleic Acid Labels for Clinical Diagnostics

Amplification-free nucleic acid assays benefit from the performance gains in sensitivity, dynamic range, and photostability that IMS products enable. These assays characteristically require large amounts of sample and reagents. This is because of high target-to-reporter requirements and because they address the high-volume high-throughput screening applications. Intelligent Material improves these requirements.

Non-Amplified Nucleic Acid Labels for Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Point-of-Care assays benefit from performance gains enabled by IMS products, as well as low equipment demand and sample preparation, making diagnostic devices simple, low cost, rugged, portable, and in some applications, disposable. In the Point-of-Care segments, analytes found in both blood and oral samples may be targeted.

Immunoassay Labels

Immunoassays benefit the performance gains in sensitivity, dynamic range, and photostability that IMS products enable. To an even greater extent, multiplexed assays benefit from these performance gains. Emission spectra are well separated with bandwidths of 25 to 50 nm. Due to this, the absence of auto-fluorescence, and the large anti-Stokes shift, sensitivity is not limited by spectral contamination and excitation leak-through, making quantification feasible.

Publications

Novel Applications of Diagnostic X-Rays in Activating a Clinical Photodynamic Drug: Photofrin II through X-ray Induced Visible Luminescence from "Rare-Earth" Formulated Particles

  • Abliz, E.; Collins, J. E.; Bell, H.; Tata, D. B. Novel Applications of Diagnostic X-Rays in Activating a Clinical Photodynamic Drug: Photofrin II through X-Ray Induced Visible Luminescence from “Rare-Earth” Formulated Particles. J Xray Sci Technol 2011, 19 (4), 521–530. https://doi.org/10.3233/XST-2011-0311.

Feasibility of a Lateral Flow Test for Neurocysticercosis Using Novel Up-Converting Nanomaterials and a Lightweight Strip Analyzer

  • Corstjens, P. L. A. M.; Dood, C. J. de; Priest, J. W.; Tanke, H. J.; Handali, S.; Peru,  and the C. W. G. in. Feasibility of a Lateral Flow Test for Neurocysticercosis Using Novel Up-Converting Nanomaterials and a Lightweight Strip Analyzer. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 2014, 8 (7), e2944. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0002944.

In Vivo Multiple Color Lymphatic Imaging Using Upconverting Nanocrystals

  • Kobayashi, H.; Kosaka, N.; Ogawa, M.; Morgan, N. Y.; Smith, P. D.; Murray, C. B.; Ye, X.; Collins, J.; Kumar, G. A.; Bell, H.; Choyke, P. L. In Vivo Multiple Color Lymphatic Imaging Using Upconverting Nanocrystals. J. Mater. Chem. 2009, 19 (36), 6481–6484. https://doi.org/10.1039/B910512C.

Dendritic Upconverting Nanoparticles Enable In Vivo Multiphoton Microscopy with Low-Power Continuous Wave Sources

  • Esipova, T. V.; Ye, X.; Collins, J. E.; Sakadžić, S.; Mandeville, E. T.; Murray, C. B.; Vinogradov, S. A. Dendritic Upconverting Nanoparticles Enable in Vivo Multiphoton Microscopy with Low-Power Continuous Wave Sources. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2012, 109 (51), 20826–20831. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1213291110