NSF Award
0109865
This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project seeks to develop a novel high-resolution instrument, the Near-Field Cell Penetrating Microscope (NCPM), for analyzing and comparing molecular characteristics of cells. This instrument will adapt a Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscope (SNOM) with a probe that can penetrate the cell membrane and image the inside of intact cells. The hypothesis is that precancerous, cancerous and normal cell lines have different molecular profiles and can be differentiated with the resolution power of SNOM. The proposed instrument will be able to collect data via high-resolution imagery, thus providing the means to investigate tumor cells at the sub-cellular and the molecular level. Incorporation of this data into a signature will facilitate the molecular analysis of cell lines and their transformed counterparts. <br/><br/>The near term commercial application of the product to be developed in this project is in the near field optical microscopy market as a research tool for the medical and biological community. The long term commercial application is in the medical diagnostic market as an early warning device for detection of diseased cells.
