PRIN 2022

Monitoring and quantifying clinically relevant antibodies as biomarkers of medical conditions and therapeuticor prophylactic regimens is key to more informed and therefore more effective clinical decisions. However, anobstacle to a more effective and efficient use of antibodies as informative biomarkers is the many limitationsshown by currently available laboratory technologies (e.g. ELISA, CLIA, etc.) and rapid point-of-care (POC) tests.

New strategies for antibody detection are needed that can combine a rapid and cost-effective POC analysiswith high sensitivity and specificity, paving the way to advanced sensing platforms for serological testing. Technologies based on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and associatedproteins (Cas) have revolutionized genome editing and, more recently, have also been repurposed into potentanalytical chemistry tools for ultrasensitive DNA and RNA detection, enabling impressive advances in nucleicacid diagnostics. The overarching objective of this project is to reengineer and adapt CRISPR-Cas-baseddetection strategies for the detection of biomarker antibodies.

These will be integrated into electrochemicaland optical sensing platforms that will support the rapid, ultrasensitive, and cost-effective detection of specificantibodies, in particular tumor-associated autoantibodies that are potential diagnostic and prognostic markersuseful in oncology. This project will leverage interdisciplinary approaches based on DNA nanotechnology,biomolecular engineering, and synthetic biology, and will provide transformative technologies that will helpimprove the efficacy and effectiveness of antibody monitoring for a wide range of medical needs, while alsomaking broadly reaching impacts in analytical chemistry, biosensing, and molecular diagnostics.