Dr Singamaneni’s from the University of Washington in St. Louis has created interesting and bright reporter molecules that could function as next generation probes for Biomarkers. Typically, the probes used are fluorescent or heavy metal but rarely have used Raman scattering for for pre-clinical assay work. The phenomenon is very interesting since it uses Surface enhanced Raman scattering between two gold surfaces to create a hotspot which can lead to massive increase in Raman scattering. This is the effect that they use as reporters called BRIGHTS.
They created a hotspot for Raman reporter between the core and the shell and that led to an amplification of the Raman effect and called them BRIGHTS (bilayered Raman-Intense Gold nanostructures with Hidden tags)
Currently, the lab is working on developing the reporters for a variety of biological assays but it remains to be see how does it compare to the other methods for biomarker detection that are in use today.
