The novel scientific concept behind OpsisDx™, developed by Entopsis Inc., is outlined in a recently published peer-reviewed scientific manuscript in the Royal Society of Chemistry Analyst journal. In addition, OpsisDx™ was selected by the editors of the journal to be featured on the journal’s cover.
The manuscript, entitled ‘A colorimetric chemical tongue detects and distinguishes between
multiple analytes’, demonstrates how photoinitiators can be used to profile simple and complex chemical mixtures using an array of polymers with distinct binding properties. The OpsisDx™ research team is exploring whether this approach can can be the basis for a multi-disease detection platform that may rival blood-based liquid biopsy tests.
Abstract
The rate-limiting step for diagnostics development is the discovery and validation of biomarker analytes. We describe a new analyte-agnostic and label-free approach based on colorimetric reactions involving type I polymerization photoinitiators. We demonstrate that a chemically diverse array of hydrogels embedded with cleaved type I photoinitiators could act as microreactors, undergoing colorimetric reactions with bound analytes. The colorimetric signatures produced were visually distinctive and readable with a flatbed document scanner. Signatures of a broad range of sample types were accurately differentiated by unsupervised clustering without knowledge of any analytes bound to the array. The principles described have the potential to enable scalable and cost-effective analysis of complex samples.
