Aptasensors as a powerful tool for very sensitive detection of amphetamine
The detection of toxic molecules such as cocaine or amphetamine is obviously of great interest and a number of methods have been developed for this purpose. The method for the detection must be sensitive and selective as well as simple to carry out. In this context, nucleic acid aptamers are very attractive. They are commonly oligonucleotides with particular conformation and they can bind with their targets in a highly efficient and specific manner. This is mainly because aptamer are selected for a specific target via the "systemic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment " (SELEX) technique. The present project aims to study this class of nucleic acids as a biosensing method by using different techniques such as Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) and ellipsometry. These techniques have been found very interesting as label free analysis. As a proof on concept, the target is L-tyrosinamide for which aptamer is known. After adequate immobilization of aptamers on biochips, detection of amphetamine-derivatives drugs will be investigated by the aforementioned techniques.
This research was conducted in the frame of "ECSTASE" project funded by French National Research Agency (ANR).
The work was carried out under the guidance of Dr. A.Van-der-Heyden and Dr. L.Guerente, in the research group of Prof. P.Labbé in I2BM research unit of Université Joseph Fourier.
Participation in the side projects:
A. Osypova, D. Thakar, J. Dejeu, H. Bonnet, A. Van der Heyden, G. V. Dubacheva, R. P. Richter, E. Defrancq, N. Spinelli, L. Coche-Guérente, and Pierre Labbé
''Sensor Based on Aptamer Folding to Detect Low-Molecular Weight Analytes''
Anal. Chem., 2015, 87 (15), pp 7566–7574