Technologies

Enabling multimodal, high order multiplexing using combined metal- and fluorophore-doped nanoparticle labels in a wide variety of applications such as image-guided surgery, diagnostics, cell tracking, elisa, etc.

Stanford researchers have developed metal and fluorophore doped nanoparticles that act as signal enhancers for multiplexing high-order imaging and detection. The nanoparticles can be inorganics like silica, hafnium oxide, etc., or soft liposomes, micelles, nanobubbles, etc., doped with radioactive metals, non-metals, isotopes, and fluorophores with a wide range of excitation wavelengths (350-1500nm). The isotope encoded nanotags significantly amplify the signal, and facilitate high-sensitivity, multimodal, high order multiplexing for a wide variety of applications such as image-guided surgery, diagnostics, cell tracking, multiplex assays, drug discovery, and anti-counterfeiting.

Isotopcially-encoded soft nanotags. A liposome can be isotopically labeled using isotope-tagged lipids (example is a deuterium- labeled lipid). The aqueous center can be loaded with radioactive, non-metal ions as well as reporters (fluorophores, iron oxides, etc.) or combinations thereof.

NanoSIMS Imaging (MIBI) using Isotopically-encoded nanotagsA) NanoSIMS imaging (MIBI) of isotopically-encoded silica nanoparticles through combinatorial barcoding using 28Si; 19F; 81Br; 127I, respectively. Examples of bare silica (‘1000’), fluorine (‘1100’), bromine (‘1010’), iodine (‘1001’), and a combination thereof (‘1111’). B) Examples of commercially- available or silane-appended scaffold molecules used to covalently incorporate the different isotopes into the silica nanotag matrix. C) Synthesis of a library of isotopically-encoded nanotags can be labeled with any targeting moiety (antibody, peptide, small molecule) to enable high-parameter multiplexed analyte detection for deep molecular profiling of biological samples.