10090216Device for Ultrafast, Gold Standard Amplification and Detection of Nucleic Acids Using Plasmonic Thermocycling - Accelerating Genomics Research and Democratising Gold-Standard Disease DetectionClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKQuantitative-polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is a powerful and extensively used tool that has been a cornerstone of genome sequencing, clinical laboratories, and precision medicine, with applications spanning personalized medicine, agricultural science, forensic science, and environmental science. However, traditional qPCR techniques have faced challenges in field applications due to the time-consuming thermocycling and time and resource intensive pre-processing steps of filtration, lysis, extraction, and purification of samples. These limitations have hindered its use in point-of-care (PoC) settings for early cancer detection and disease diagnostics. The game-changing solution comes in the form of Plasmonic PCR, an emerging concept that employs gold nanoparticles thermocycled by powerful vertical cavity surface emitting laser diodes (VCSELS). This innovation enables detection of pathogens in under 5 minutes, eliminating the need for time-consuming pre-processing steps. This would drastically increase the speed of research synthetic biology, where thermocycling due to PCR and pre-processing requirements act as a bottleneck. Moreover, as a key example and proof of concept for its application in precision medicine, our preliminary data has already demonstrated the rapid lysis of bacteria and the quantification of unprocessed samples, outperforming traditional PCR methods. The key to Plasmonic PCR's success lies in its ultrafast thermocycling, enabling results in just minutes, and its ability to test unprocessed samples from various media, including saliva, urine, nasopharyngeal swabs, milk, blood, water, and air. This transformative technology significantly expands the application space for PCR, making it a broadly applicable tool accessible beyond the laboratory setting. In this groundbreaking project, we aim to translate this concept into a prototype, with a focus on speeding up genomics research and making precision medicine accessible to a broader audience. As a first application of our technology, we aim to set a new gold standard for point-of-care microbial detection and explore its potential in early cancer detection (circulating tumor DNA).