Introduction

The IRP “Fibermed” (“Specialty optical fiber based biosensing for medical applications”) is developed in partnership between the research Laboratory XLIM, UMR7252, Limoges, France and the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (SBIC) of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Agency, Singapore. It addresses the development of new biosensing techniques and tool prototypes for medical diagnostics, by exploiting the properties of specially fabricated optical fiber as biosensing platforms

Missions and research themes

This IRP project is an extension of the PICS project implemented by the two partners from 2016 to 2018 entitled “Bio-detection platforms based on special optical fibers for clinical diagnostics” dedicated to the development of ultra-high sensitive Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) and Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) fiber-based platforms as practical clinical diagnostic tools.

The IRP project aims at associating the complementary and multidisciplinary expertise of SBIC and XLIM, for developing new biosensing techniques and tool prototypes for medical diagnostics at the bedside (in clinical environments). The originality of this project lies in exploiting the properties of functionalized special optical fibers to improve the performances of existing biosensing techniques or to develop new biosensing techniques. This project is based on XLIM’s expertise in the design and fabrication of specialty optical fibers, and on SBIC’s expertise in the development of bio-photonic based biosensing platforms for real-life medical applications in translational modalities with the medical and industrial communities.

MAIN projects of research

The properties offered by the optical fibers will be used for i) increasing the length of light-analyte interactions by the infiltration of the analyte into an optical fiber or by exposing the core to gases or VOCs via an exposed-core fiber, ii) improving the reliability of the measurements with a reproducible coupling between the optical fiber and the measuring device, iii) developing prototypes of fiber probes by exploiting the robustness and the intrinsic compactness of the optical fibers.

These properties will be exploited and associated to new concepts for developing the following projects of fiber-probe prototypes for medical diagnostics:

1 – Biosensing fiber probes based on Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)

2 – Biosensing fiber probes based on Metal Enhanced Fluorescence (MEF)

3 – Biosensing fiber probes based on Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)

4 – Fork based photoacoustic spectroscopy for in-fiber analysis of VOC or gases

5 – Advanced in-fiber acoustic-sensor for all-fiber photo-acoustic sensing and imaging.

6 – Metasurfaces for developing polarization-sensitive fiber-probe (via waveform engineering).

The main expected results and benefits of the IRP FiberMed for both laboratories and its immediate environment are:

• Generating scientific and technological knowledge,
• Generating intellectual properties by filling patent applications throughout the chain of development of medical diagnostic tools (from the design of the optical fiber to the prototype tested in a clinical environment),
• Prototyping realizations of biosensing tools compatible with medical applications,

Educating and training students at Master and PhD levels

institutions and laboratories involved

France
Coordination : Dr. Georges Humbert, XLIM, UMR 7252 – CNRS – Université Limoges, Limoges

Singapore
Coordination : Dr Dinish U.S (UnnimadhavaKurupSoudamini Amma), Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (SBIC), Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Agency