Lay summary
Dr Meglinski, Professor Young-Tae Chang, Dr Hong Yee Low and Dr Anton Sadovoy have established a joint research partnership to create a photosensitizer library to discover new photosensitizers with selectivity against cancer cells and to develop novel optical multi-sensor probes for earlier cancer diagnosis and PDT. This research addresses the novel concept of combining simple non-contact optical/fluorescence spectroscopy with an array of environment-sensitive fluorescent dyes, incorporated into sub-micron capsules and/or an array of nano-capsules. The capsule's shell behaves as a membrane that is impermeable for florescence dyes suspended within the capsules, but is permeable for the external environment. Thus, the direct contact of fluorescence dyes with cells/tissues is excluded and the issues associated with the toxicity and bio-compatibility can be omitted. The current project is a natural extension of these studies and addresses the novel concept of combining simple non-contact, bio-photonic-based diagnostic techniques and the use of optical multi-sensors for rapid screening of cells and biological tissues (see e.g. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Vol.58. No.8, pp.2154 - 2160 (2011)).