SEMINAR: Prof.Dr.Selim Ünlü 'Commercialization..
Time: March 28th, 2022 11:00AM
Place: FENS G035 (Physical only)
Please find the abstract of the talk and the short bio of the speaker below.
Abstract:Synergistic collaboration of researchers from multiple disciplines of science and engineering has been crucial for advances in understanding biomolecular interactions. Since all biological pathways rely on protein-DNA, protein-protein, and other biomolecular interactions, not only is accurate characterization of these interactions crucial, but also, they are prime targets for disruption with small molecules in disease treatment. Both in vitro diagnostics (IVD) and pharmaceutical industry rely on biotechnology tools to discover and develop new molecular interactions. For example, measuring residence time of a drug is critical to determining its clinical efficacy. Emerging diseases call for new blood/urine/saliva tests and thus new molecular discoveries. There is an increasing demand to measure the affinities of biomarkers both for new medicines and diagnostics. The IVD and pharma industries are growing robustly. To address emerging market and technical challenges, industry needs a robust, quantitative, and high-sensitivity label-free technology for accurate analysis binding kinetics of biomolecules from proteins to small molecule analytes.
The customers’ need for better understanding of binding kinetics using native proteins and ligands is the driving motivation for molecular kinetics by Label Free Detection (LFD). Many LFD techniques rely on non-linear and complex dependence of transduced signal on the molecular binding to increase sensitivity yielding signals difficult to decode and quantify, and often, LFD is regarded as a "black box" technology. Our innovation - Interferometric Reflectance Imaging Sensor, iRiS - defies the conventional wisdom that calls for enhancing the signal through complex optical resonances. Instead, we exploit light interference from an optically transparent thin film—the same phenomenon that gives rainbow colors to a soap film when illuminated by white light.
The power of signal averaging enables a virtually unlimited sensitivity in a simple imaging platform. More than a decade of funded academic research with 20+ PhD dissertations have led to refinement of iRiS technology and demonstration of its performance advantages. In this talk, we discuss the technology translation and commercialization efforts and the journey of building start-ups out of an academic lab.
Bio: M. Selim Ünlü received the B.S. degree from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1986, and the M.S.E.E. (1988) and Ph.D. (1992) degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in electrical engineering. Since 1992, he has been a professor at Boston University. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Engineering appointed in electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, physics, materials science and engineering, and graduate medical sciences. His research interests are in the areas of nanophotonics and biophotonics focusing on high-resolution solid immersion lens microscopy of integrated circuits and development of biological detection and imaging techniques, particularly in high-throughput digital biosensors based on detection of individual biological nanoparticles, viruses, and single molecule counting.
Dr. Ünlü has authored and co-authored >200 journal articles and has over 12,000 citations (h-index of 57); edited one book; and holds 18 US/international patents. In 2021, he was selected as Boston University Innovator of the Year. Dr. Ünlü is a Fellow of IEEE, Optica, and AIMBE. He was awarded the Science Award (2008) by the Turkish Scientific Foundation.