Qun Huo

NanoScience Technology Center, University of Central Florida

12424 Research Parkway Suite 400, Orlando, FL 32826

Email: Qun.Huo@ucf.edu

 

Nanotechnology is bringing many ground-breaking tools and new capabilities to biomolecule research and medical diagnosis. Gold nanoparticles as one of the most extensively studied nanomaterials, have many interesting and unique optical properties. These properties make gold nanoparticles as excellent optical probes for biomolecular imaging and bioassay applications. Based on the light scattering property of gold nanoparticles, our group developed a nanoparticle-enabled dynamic light scattering assay (NanoDLSay) technology for biomolecular detection and analysis. This technique detects proteins, DNAs and other biomolecular targets by monitoring the size change of the gold nanoparticles caused by target analyte binding. In the last few years, we have conducted extensive work on cancer biomarker research using NanoDLSay technique and made several very exciting new discoveries. Most recently, we developed a quantitative nanoparticle assay that not only can distinguish prostate cancer from normal and benign conditions, but also is capable of predicting the aggressiveness of prostate cancer quantitatively. This test could become a more accurate diagnostic tool to assess tumor aggressiveness than the current diagnostic practices. In this talk, I will explain the principle of the new assay technique, and present our most recent results on cancer biomarker detection and research.