Dana Alsulaiman

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia

Title: Rational Design of PNA-functionalized 2D and 3D Nanomaterials for Ultrasensitive Electrochemical Detection of microRNA Biomarkers

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Biography

Dana Alsulaiman is an Assistant Professor of Material Science and Bioengineering at KAUST. Her group focuses on developing advanced biomaterials and next-generation technologies for minimally-invasive disease diagnosis and personalized therapy. Her research includes advancements in encoded hydrogel microparticles, stimuli-responsive microneedles and point of-care optical and electrochemical biosensors.

Dr Alsulaiman completed her PhD in Bioengineering, supported by the Imperial College London President’s PhD Scholarship. In 2019, she moved to the USA to pursue her postdoctoral training at MIT. She is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards including the IET Healthcare Technologies Award (2019) and MIT Technology Review’s Innovator’s Under 35 Award (2021).

Abstract

MicroRNA represent a class of short (22-25 nt) non-coding RNA, which hold great promise as clinical biomarkers due to their gene regulatory functions and dysregulated patterns in many diseases including cancer. Notably, circulating cell-free microRNA have emerged as highly promising ‘liquid biopsy’ biomarkers for cancer; however, their short lengths and low concentrations make them challenging to detect reliably, even with gold standard techniques like RT-qPCR. There is thus an urgent need to develop simple and robust microRNA biosensors that offer high sensitivity (picomolar to femtomolar regime) and specificity (singlenucleotide resolution), while being amenable for point-of-care testing. Two platforms for electrochemical detection of microRNA which exploit the specificity of Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) probes and the sensitivity of advanced 2D and 3D nanomaterials. PNAs, which are synthetic pseudo-peptide analogues of DNA or RNA, offer greater stability, sequence specificity, and resistance to degradation when compared to their natural counterparts.

Using solid phase peptide synthesis methods, we have prepared bespoke PNA probes with two types of functionalities enabling either bio-orthogonal click chemistry or ?-? stacking on the biosensing surface. Successful fabrication and biofunctionalization were validated through physicochemical and surface characterization techniques including XPS, SEM, and Raman spectroscopy. During the proof-of-concept studies, the biosensors demonstrated high sensitivity (low femtomolar limits of detection), high specificity, and a large dynamic range. Ultimately, this talk will demonstrate the immense potential of PNA-functionalized nanomaterials in the development of highly sensitive point-of-care biosensors for microRNA detection, enabling the next generation of minimally-invasive cancer diagnostic tools.