BIOSENSORS FOR EMERGING POLLUTANTS: PROMISES OF SYNTHETIC AFFINITY LIGANDS AND RELATED CHALLENGES

Description:
Antibodies are the most successful affinity tools nowadays used in research area, but also for many analytical applications in food industry (components, toxins, pollutants, adulterants…) and biomedical fields (diagnostics and therapeutics). However, these remarkable recognition elements do have their limitations, mainly related to high production costs and low stability. In recent years, intensive research has been dedicated to the development of alternative affinity ligands, among which attractive candidates are nucleotidic aptamers and molecularly-imprinted polymers. Despite their very different structures, these compounds share the ability to be produced for a wide variety of target compounds, ranging from ions to cells, they are selected using non-invasive in vitro screening procedures and they can be easily reproduced once optimized. Although these synthetic recognition elements are not yet commonly applied in conventional analysis, their applications have steadily increased in recent years. This presentation will thus focus on the use of aptamers and molecularly-imprinted polymers in biosensing technology, highlighting their use for detecting emerging pollutants like drugs and toxins. A special highlight will be given the issue of signal transduction and chemical labelling.

Speaker: Thierry Noguer - University of Perpignan
Thierry Noguer is full professor of Biochemistry at the University of Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD), France, since 2008. He received his PhD in Agrochemistry in 1997 and worked as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo (RCAST, 1998-1999). He was hired as an associate professor at the UPVD in 1999 and he received the accreditation to direct research in 2004. He became director of the IMAgES laboratory (EA4218) from 2010 to 2015. He is currently head of the "Biosensors, analysis, environment" laboratory (BAE) since 2015. This multidisciplinary research group is associated with the Biodiversity and Microbial Biotechnology Laboratory of Banyuls (Sorbonne University, UAR 3579). T. Noguer's research topics include enzyme sensors, immunosensors, and aptasensors with electrochemical detection techniques, as well as molecularly imprinted polymers. He is author and co-author of 86 publications (H index = 31).