LICAMM Blood biomarkers for differentiation of stroke from mimics using a novel laser optical technique

Summary

Stroke is the second most common cause of mortality and the third most common cause of disability in the world. Despite advances in the field of neuroimaging, potential limitations such as lengthy procedure, costly equipment and image analysis variations have hampered their efficient use in acute stroke diagnosis and differentiation. A complimentary biomarker test to discriminate between stroke and stroke mimic will have the potential to be used for stroke management and treatment throughout the patient care pathways.

The proposed multidisciplinary project aims to use a novel laser technology developed in our lab to detect and quantify a range of brain damage biomarkers in blood plasma/ serum obtained from people with stroke, and stroke mimics. Clinical and radiological data will be used to define cases and controls and compare against biomarker levels. The specific objectives are,

• To conjugate antibodies against biomarkers with Up-conversion nanoparticles (UCNPs)
• To detect, quantify serum biomarkers with the functionalised UCNP and assess the specificity and sensitivity ((limit of detection) of the technique.
• To quantify brain specific circulating biomarkers between acute stroke and stroke-mimics using the technique
• To correlate biomarker concentrations with stroke severity and functional stroke outcome.

References

• Bsat, et al., (2021), Acute ischemic stroke biomarkers: a new era with diagnostic promise? Acute Med Surg, 8: e696. https://doi.org/10.1002/ams2.696
• Bustamante et al., (2017) Blood Biomarkers for the Early Diagnosis of Stroke
  The Stroke-Chip Study, Stroke. 48:2419–2425

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