Recent infectious outbreaks highlight the need for platform technologies that can be quickly deployed to develop therapeutics needed to contain the outbreak. We present a simple concept for rapid development of new antimicrobials. The goal was to produce in as little as one week thousands of doses of an intervention for a new pathogen. We tested the feasibility of a system based on antimicrobial synbodies. The system involves creating an array of 100 peptides that have been selected for broad capability to bind and/or kill viruses and bacteria. The peptides are pre-screened for low cell toxicity prior to large scale synthesis. Any pathogen is then assayed on the chip to find peptides that bind or kill it. Peptides are combined in pairs as synbodies and further screened for activity and toxicity. The lead synbody can be quickly produced in large scale, with completion of the entire process in one week.

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The development of cell-specific photoacoustic (PA) contrast agents within systems of fluidic flow provides opportunities for the accurate detection of early stage cancer metastasis. Despite the promise of exogenous contrast agents for use in clinical settings, applications are currently limited by both material biocompatibility and target specificity. In this study, folic acid functionalized copper sulfide nanoparticles (FA-CuS NPs) are synthesized to enable ovarian-cancer-specific binding and PA detection in a custom flow system. Folate receptors, known to be overexpressed on the surface of ovarian cancer cells, have remained an ideal candidate for specific targeting through functionalization on nanoparticles and other contrast agents. In combination with copper sulfide nanoparticles’ strong absorbance in the near-infrared (NIR), these FA-CuS NPs are an ideal contrast agent capable of being detected by photoacoustic flow cytometry. For the first time, this study shows a potential PA contrast agent to accurately identify ovarian circulating tumor cells in flow.

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