CityU Technology Transfer Forum - Chemosensing

Today, I attended the CityU Technology Transfer Forum with the title “Chemosensors & Chemosensing Technology Development”.

Dr. Michael Lam was one of the speakers. I met him when I was MPhil student in BCH Dept., CityU in 1994. His topic entitled “Low-cost Chemosensing Approaches for Clinical, Food & Environment Testing” and the summary was shown below.


Dr. Lam introduced different applications of the chemosensor such as drug testing and screening.

He also compared the advantageous and disadvantageous features of chemosensing.
Advantage:
- in-situ measurement
- non-destructive analysis
- non-demanding on sample volume
- not require sophisticated instrumentations
- low operating cost, low technical requirement from operators
- rapid analysis and provide real-time responses, etc.
Disadvantage:
- tedious design and synthesis
- cannot be reused
- can only recognize functional groups, but not molecular shape

What is Chemosensor? Chemosensors are molecular devices able to selectively recognize and reversibly bind targeted molecular entitles and yield measurable signals.

Photo showed the basic principle of chemosensor.

Then molecular imprinting polymer had highly specific binding sites to bind the target material such as drug and environmental contaminants (e.g. Chlordane, DDT, Dioxins, PCBs and PBDEs, etc.), then it would generate different color (e.g. blue to red).

According to Dr. Lam, some products have being filed to be patent. Therefore, the chemical formula is in secret.

He concluded the possible applications of chemosensing as follows:
i) Screening of targeted contaminants such as pesticides, forbidden additives, drugs, in food, beverages and other products
ii) Rapid QC screening in food production, packaging and other manufacturing processes
iii) Rapid screening of targeted pharmaceuticals, hormones, proteins and related bio-molecules in clinical diagnostics
iv) Screening diagnostic test kits for health-care at home

At the end, Dr. Lam demonstrated the function of chemosensor solution by testing the gas withdrawn from the packaging of a stale fish using syringe. We all observed a slight color changed under UV light.

City University founded in 1984 and launched the CityU Business & Industrial Club (CUBIC) in order to establish close links with local business and industrial communities in 1993.
For more information, please visit http://www.cityu.edu.hk/kto/cubic .