Tuan Vo-Dinh
Duke University, NC·Biomedical Engineering
Many serious diseases leave molecular traces in the body long before symptoms are obvious. Short RNA molecules circulating in the blood, and specific messenger RNAs in tumor tissue, can signal conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or cancer.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Chemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
surface-enhanced Raman scattering
nanobiosensor
plasmonics
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop CARTP, a signal-amplifying add-on to inverse Molecular Sentinel SERS nanoprobes, and test its specificity, sensitivity and multiplexing for three Alzheimer's-related microRNAs using synthetic targets.
- Evaluate the CARTP assay on RNA extracted from clinical plasma samples, comparing its microRNA results against next-generation sequencing data to judge its value for Alzheimer's diagnosis.
- Build ultrabright SERS "nanorattle" probes, metal nanoparticles that strongly boost light signals, to detect several mRNA biomarkers of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma at once.
- Integrate the nanorattle assay with lab-on-a-stick technology into RAPID, an automated, portable device, and validate it on fresh tissue and brush cytology biopsies.
- Deploy the RAPID device for point-of-care head and neck cancer testing in an underserved community setting.
More about the research
Current tests for these molecules are often slow, expensive and tied to specialized laboratories. Both projects build light-based nanoscale sensors that can detect several such molecules at once. The goal is fast, simple "sample-to-answer" tests that minimally trained staff could run at the point of care.
Why it matters
These tests could give earlier and cheaper diagnoses to people who now wait weeks or lack access to testing. A simple blood-based microRNA test may support early detection of Alzheimer's disease. A portable, under-an-hour cancer test could let patients in low-income communities with suspicious head and neck lesions begin treatment before the cancer spreads. Because the sensing methods are general, the same approach could later be adapted to other diseases and to global health settings.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pietro Strobbia
University of Cincinnati, OH·Chemistry
Identify which functional DNA sequence features control the performance of catalytic surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensors, using inverse design and machine learning.
Jeremy Driskell
Illinois State University, IL·Chemistry
Determine how nanobody charge, controlled by pH, affects adsorption onto gold nanoparticles, and build a predictive model for making stable, robust nanobody-gold conjugates.
Rupa Haldavnekar
University of Oklahoma, OK·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensing approach, a light-based method that reads molecular fingerprints, to detect subtle blood-based changes signaling early ovarian tumor formation.
The school
Duke University: 61 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 417 research doctorates a year.
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