Nanoplasmonic sensing: From maple syrup analysis to neurochemistry
Jean-François Masson
Professor, Department of Chemistry
University of Montreal
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
2:30 p.m.
In-person: C2-361 (Reading Room)
Abstract: This presentation will introduce our research activities in plasmonic nanobiosensing. Our research lies in the areas of plasmonic materials, low-fouling surface chemistry, and instrumental design for biosensing. This presentation will focus on applying these concepts for several classes of sensors, such as for monitoring off flavors in maple syrups, to detect antibody quality for COVID-19, and our recent development of sensors for in tissue measurement of neurotransmitters. In the first example, AuNP were optimized to aggregate in presence of maple sap or syrup presenting off flavors. The sensor was tested with more than 1,800 maple syrups in the lab and at the maple sugar shacks by producers. In a second embodiment of our research, we developed a series of tests to monitor the presence of antibodies elicited by individuals that were infected or vaccinated for COVID-19. In this case, we use a portable SPR platform to screen for the presence of antibodies in sera of individuals and we measured the quality of their immune response with affinity and pseudo-neutralization tests. We will show data of the immune response to the original strain and for a series of variants of concerns present in Canada and elsewhere. Lastly, we are currently exploring the concept of optophysiology using plasmonic nanopipettes for monitoring living cell secretion events. Due to the lack of analytical techniques for detecting metabolites near living cells, developing tools to monitor cell secretion events remains a challenge to overcome in chemical analysis. Plasmonic nanopipettes were developed based on the decoration of patch clamp nanocapillaries with Au nanoparticles. The plasmonic nanopipette is thus competent for dynamic SERS measurements in the liquid environment near cells. We combine this technique with machine learning to identify spectral differences in analytes and in different conditions. This nanobiosensor was tested with the detection of small metabolites near living cells and of neurotransmitters released by neurons.
Biography: Jean-François Masson is full professor of Chemistry at the Université de Montréal. He studied chemistry at the Université de Sherbrooke (BSc), Arizona State University (PhD), and Georgia Tech (postdoc). His laboratory develops new plasmonic materials, instruments, and surface chemistry for the detection of broad range of molecules directly in crude samples, which are then translated to functional sensors for a series of biological, environmental, and industrial applications. He has published more than 125 research articles and his research has led to filing more than 10 patents on various instrumental, materials, or surface chemistry innovations for biosensing. He is an Associate Editor for ACS Sensors. In 2015, he co-founded Affinité Instruments, a Canadian start-up company commercializing surface plasmon resonance (SPR) instrumentation. Jean-Francois has received several awards including the Tomas Hirschfeld award (2005), a NSERC discovery accelerator (2011), the Fred Beamish award (2013), and the McBryde Medal (2019) of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, and an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, Germany (2013-2014) for research at the Max-Planck Institute. In 2017, he was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry – UK and, more recently, he was named in the 2018 power list of the top 40 under 40 analytical scientists and the 2019 power list of the top 100 most influential analytical scientists from The Analytical Scientist – UK.