Zharov Vladimir P
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA
Title: In vivo flow cytometry for early diagnosis and prevention of infections
Biography
Biography: Zharov Vladimir P
Abstract
Infections remain one of the main causes of death in the worldwide. The diagnosis of infections and other diseases begins with a common medical procedure: The examination of blood samples. The sensitivity of current blood tests is limited by the small volume of blood collected, in which no less than one disease-specific biomarker (e.g., pathogen) can be detected. This can miss many thousands of abnormal cells and biomarkers in the whole blood volume (~5 liter in adults), which can be sufficient for disease progression to difficult-to-treat if not already incurable complications (e.g., sepsis). This report summarizes our novel concept of early disease diagnosis with ~1000-fold improved sensitivity using in vivo non-invasive photoacoustic (PA) flow cytometry (PAFC) platform for identification and enumeration of rare circulating disease-associated biomarkers with intrinsic PA contrasts (e.g., hemozoinin malaria) or molecularly targeted with the functionalized gold nanoparticles. The principle of PAFC is based on the irradiation of the superficial blood vessels with near-infrared laser pulses followed by detection of laser-induced acoustic waves from single biomarkers with small ultrasound transducer attached to skin. In addition, the integration in real-time diagnosis and therapy (called theranostics) can eradicate circulating bacteria and viruses and thus can potentially prevent or at least inhibit deadly complications. Recent advances of this label-free theranostics platform is presented with focus on its pre-clinical and clinical trials associated with malaria, S. aureus and bacteremia.
