Project: Monitoring of Acquired Brain Injury and recovery biomarkers by the combined label-free nanoSensing of multiple circulating molecules

Acronym	ABISens (Reference Number: JTC2018-060)
Duration	01/06/2019 - 31/12/2022
Project Topic	The evaluation of patients after acquired brain injuries (ABI) like traumatic brain injury, stroke and haemorrhagic events remains a major unmet clinical need. ABI usually produces severe impairments and nowadays the diagnosis, the prognosis and the efficacy of rehabilitation treatments are mainly assessed by clinical examinations, neuroimaging and electrophysiological tests during a long hospitalization period. The detection and quantification of brain injury and recovery biomarkers in biofluids is indeed a challenge. First, a reliable biomarker-based evaluation requires to monitor a panel of multiple biomarkers with appropriate analytical robustness. Second, a blood-based test would be the best option because cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) withdrawals are unfeasible for long-term, repeated tests. On the other hand, brain biomarkers can be found in blood but usually at very low concentration. The aim of our proposal is to develop a new nanobiosensor platform able to identify and quantify multiple brain biomarkers (three miRNAs and three proteins initially selected) in blood and with high sensitivity. The final biosensor configuration will be based on a highly sensitive Bimodal Waveguide (BiMW) nanointerferometer device, integrated with a microfluidic network within a miniaturized optical platform for the label-free detection of the multiple selected biomarkers. The biosensing strategy will be fully based on oligonucleotide chemistry thanks to traditional and non-traditional oligo-probes for miRNA detection, and DNA-based aptamers for proteins detection. The project will be characterized by a strong interdisciplinary and translational nature resulting from the meeting between real clinical needs and high-level technological integration of biosensing and bimolecular aspects. The final tool will be validated on samples from 30 brain injury patients (and 15 healthy subjects) collected at the patient admission and during the rehabilitation period (six months).
Website	visit project website
Network	EuroNanoMed III
Call	Joint Transnational Call (2018)

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red, M.P.	Coordinator	Spain
2	Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri Spa Società Benefit	Partner	Italy
3	University of Bordeaux	Partner	France