Bio Photonics Research

Light can be a powerful tool for manipulating molecular events. It is noninvasive, relatively straightforward to use, and can provide excellent spatial and temporal control. A light activation tool has been developed at the University of Geneva that can control both the activity and localization of various types of molecules in vivo. The tool could enable researchers to control a molecule at a specific location in a living organism without affecting the surrounding cells. It could be used for both research and medical treatments such as those for skin cancer. The researchers initially set out to modify a well-characterized inhibitor of Polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1). Their aim was to develop a way to control the activation and inactivation of a protein at a specific location within the organism, to better understand its functions. “Everything started from this methodological question,” professor Monica Gotta said. “We were looking for a way to inhibit a protein involved in cell division,...

Changes in tissue structure, such as to the boundaries of cancerous tumors, occur in many disease processes. Terahertz ( THz) waves demonstrate the potential to detect these changes. The ability to identify and characterize microscopic structural changes in tissue using THz imaging could enable earlier detection of cancer, improving patient outcomes. While polarization measurements of reflected THz waves are thought to have diagnostic value, the underlying mechanisms that create different polarization responses in tissues remain poorly understood. This gap in understanding underscores a need for computational models capable of explaining and predicting the phenomena that researchers have observed experimentally. In a study led by professor Hassan Arbab, researchers at Stony Brook University analyzed Mie scattering of polarized THz light from cancerous tumor budding using Monte Carlo simulation . They compared the outcome of the simulation with experimental results obtained in phanto...

Netherlands-based photonic chip accelerator PhotonDelta has collaborated with Luminate NY, an accelerator for startups with optics, photonics, and imaging enabled technologies, to support the growth of early-stage photonics companies across North America and the Netherlands. Through this collaboration, startups that are part of the PhotonDelta or Luminate can get access to the benefits from each other's accelerator programs. This will enable photonics startups to leverage these ecosystems and relationships to accelerate innovation and scaling into the global market. PhotonDelta and Luminate will work together to identify and vet candidates for participation in their programs and accelerator cycles. In addition, both organizations will introduce startups to their extensive networks of industry experts, investors, mentors, and production facilities. The collaboration will also provide soft-landing services as they establish a presence in both the U.S. and the Netherlands, thereby ...

  Optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) are used to measure magnetic fields in biosensing, contraband testing, and magnetic communications. They also aid in dark matter searches and serve as promising platforms for quantum -enhanced measurements. Accurate vector magnetometry, however, remains a challenge for OPMs due to the OPM’s inherent scalar operation. Scalar OPMs require an external reference to extract directional information. While scalar measurements are often sufficient, robust calibration of vector OPMs is increasingly important for applications requiring high accuracy as well as precision. Researchers at JILA, a joint research institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, demonstrated a vector OPM that uses Rabi oscillations driven between the manifolds of rubidium atoms to measure the direction of a magnetic field against the polarization ellipse structure of a microwave field. The researchers exposed a cell con...

A research team at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a wearable sensor based on microlasers to measure biomarkers found in sweat. The bandage-like device could provide a way to monitor blood sugar levels noninvasively. Human sweat contains biomarkers such as glucose, lactate, and urea that indicate various health conditions and can be collected in a noninvasive and painless manner, making it ideal for daily monitoring, the researchers said. Diabetic patients typically use an invasive finger prick test to self-monitor blood glucose levels. A small drop is drawn from the finger and put into contact with a strip which is inserted into a portable glucose meter for reading. Alternatively, there are sensor-based monitoring devices, which can be expensive and rigid and must be attached to a patient’s skin over prolonged periods of time. By encapsulating a microlaser in liquid crystal droplets and embedding the liquid within a soft hydrogel film, the...

A Molecular engineering spearheaded by two groups at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has developed an approach to create photoacoustic probes for neuroscience applications. Scientists can learn more about biological processes by tracking certain chemicals, such as ions or biomolecules. Photoacoustic probes can act as ‘reporters’ for hard-to-detect chemicals by binding to them specifically. The probes can then absorb light when excited by lasers and emit sound waves that can be detected by specialized imaging equipment. For neuroscience applications, however, researchers have so far been unable to engineer targeted reporters that can visualize brain functions tailored for photoacoustics. “Photoacoustics offer a way to capture imagery of an entire mouse brain, but we just lacked the right probes to visualize a neuron’s activity,” said Robert Prevedel, an EMBL group leader and a senior author on the paper. To overcome this challenge, Prevedel enlisted the help of fello...

A team at Heriot-Watt University, led by professor Christian Brahms, is developing a light source for extremely fast laser pulses that will enable scientists to observe some of the fastest processes in the natural world as they occur. The new laser light source will capture natural processes like light absorption in photosynthesis in attoseconds. The project, which is called FASTER — short for Flexible Attosecond Soliton Transients for Extreme Resolution — will build on the EUV attosecond technology that received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023. Brahms and his team will design and build a laser light source that mimics natural sunlight, but in extremely short flashes. “My aim is to create laser pulses with similar extremely short duration to conventional attosecond science sources, but at the same ultraviolet and visible wavelengths as we get from the sun,” he said. FASTER will bring attosecond time resolution to ultrafast spectroscopy experiments in the UV, visible, and IR region...

A research team from Nanjing University has developed a solution that improves metalens performance in and for microscopy applications. The researchers’ metalens-based microscope achieves both a wide field of view (FOV) and high-resolution imaging, addressing the inherent trade-off between these two critical parameters that, according to the researchers, has prevented metalenses to date from achieving performance comparable to conventional microscopes. Metalenses face significant challenges in practical microscopy applications. Off-axis aberrations, which severely restrict metalens FOV and resolution capabilities, are the primary limitations to the use of metalenses in practical microscopy. In their system architecture, the researchers used a doublet configuration of two metalenses on opposite sides of a transparent silica substrate combined with annular illumination. The two metalenses consist of silicon nitride nano-fins, crafted as high-aspect-ratio squares with precise dimension...

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have increased the measurement rate of Raman spectroscopy by 100-fold. Since the measurement rate of the technique has been a major limitation, the improvement is expected to aid advancements in multiple fields relying on the identification of molecules and cells , such as biomedical diagnostics and material analytics. As a mode of identification for cells and molecules, Raman spectroscopy is widely used, but it’s limited in its ability to keep up with the speed of changes in certain chemical and physical reactions due to the low scattering cross section. Over the last decade, various broadband-coherent Raman scattering spectroscopy techniques have been developed to address the limitation, achieving a measurement of 500 kSpectra/s (kilospectra per second). In order to further improve the measurement rate, the team built a system from scratch, leveraging a mode-locked ytterbium laser system developed by Takuro Ideguchi and his team at the Instit...

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing challenge for the healthcare and e nvironmental sectors. Bacterial persistence is usually the first step leading to resistance, which involves a change in an organism’s genome. In the future, it may be possible to address antibiotic persistence and resistance by using light to regulate bacterial response to antibiotics. A technique developed at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano), by a team participating in the Engineering of Bacteria to See Light (EOS) project, allows bacteria to sense light and convert light energy into electrical signals across the bacterial membrane, without the need for genetic modification. To demonstrate photocontrol of bacterial membrane potential, the researchers attached phototransducing molecules to bacterial surfaces to make the bacteria light-responsive. When the researchers exposed the phototransducers to light, the electrical potential of the bacterial membrane changed. The researc...

An adaptation of OCT put into use at Northwestern University, visible OCT (vis-OCT), will be a key component in an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)-funded project that aims to conduct successful eye transplants in the next several years. The technology will be used to examine the structural integrity of eyes in donors, such as the health of retinal layers and the flow of blood as well as monitoring their continued viability throughout the process. This work will be supported by over $50 million in ARPA-H funds to multiple institutions, earmarked for viability, imaging, surgical, immunomodulation, ocular preservation, and neuroregeneration strategies within the Transplantation of Human Eye Allografts (THEA) project. The Northwestern team, led by Hao Zhang, a professor of biomedical engineering, and Cheng Sun, a professor of mechanical engineering, will be part of group directed by Jeffrey Goldberg, professor and chair of ophthalmology at the Byers Eye Institute at...

Label-free imaging using two-photon autofluorescence of reduced form nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate, or NAD(P)H, provides nondestructive, high-resolution, 3D visualization of cellular activities in living systems. Due to light scattering, however, this imaging technique typically can only penetrate as far as 300 μm into living tissues. To enable deep imaging of thick tissues, researchers at MIT implemented multimode fiber-based, three-photon excitation of NAD(P)H with a low repetition rate and high peak power. They used living, engineered, human multicellular microtissues as test samples. With this approach, the researchers more than doubled the standard depth limit of NAD(P)H imaging, extending it beyond 700 μm. They achieved deep and dynamic simultaneous localization and mapping (dSLAM) microscopy for structural and metabolic imaging of intact, living biosystems. The dSLAM microscopy technique attained a high peak power exceeding 0.5 megawatts (MW) at a band of 1100 n...

NEUHERBERG, Germany,— A microscope built with quanta image sensor (QIS) technology will allow researchers to visualize bioluminescence signals in living cells in detail and over long durations. Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) developed the QIScope instrument to overcome the constraints of bioluminescence imaging. The device uses highly sensitive camera technology that is able to detect extremely low levels of light. Bioluminescence offers an alternative to fluorescence that is less harsh for live-cell imaging, but the use of bioluminescence is limited by its low intensity. Specialized instruments, such as electron-multiplying charge-coupled device microscopes, compensate for the faint emission in bioluminescence by sacrificing spatial resolution, field of view, and dynamic range. The researchers harnessed the full potential of the QIS camera technology by developing an optical system that combines features of a telescope with those of a m...

A significant feature of this field is visualizing and detecting cells and tissue . This involves the injection of fluorescent markers, into a living system, to follow dynamics of a cell and drug delivery. Tissue biology involves the analysis of the microscopic structure of animal and human tissues. This is often performed by examining a thin tissue slice under a light or an electron microscope. This inter-disciplinary analysis of the biology and photonics is utilized to detect, image, and govern biological components in the tissues. Laser processing of tissue by biophotons The mechanisms of various laser tissue interactions for removal of tissue, cutting, and coagulating are widely utilized for surgical measures in several major clinical professions such as dentistry, ophthalmology, gynecology, nose and throat surgery, surgery of ear, and urology. This is inspired by the fact that the magnificent dominance on laser parameters permits ultra-precise surgical procedures without harming...

Fifty or so years ago French physicist Pierre Aigrain coined the term photonics as a research field whose goal was to use light to perform functions that traditionally fell within the typical domain of electronics, such as telecommunications, and information processing. Or maybe it was John Campbell who, in a letter sent to Gotthard Gunther in 1954, wrote, “Incidentally, I’ve decided to invent a new science — photonics. It bears the same relationship to Optics that electronics does to electrical engineering. Photonics, like electronics, will deal with the individual units; optics and EE deal with the group phenomena! And note that you can do things with electronics that are impossible in electrical engineering!” Naming rights aside, the field of photonics began in earnest between 1958 and 1960 with the invention of the maser and the laser. The laser diode followed during the 1970s, optical fibers and the erbium-doped fiber amplifier after that, and, pretty soon, the telecommunications...

Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Biophotonics Market By End User (Medical Diagnostics, Medical Therapeutics, Tests & Components, and Nonmedical Application) and Application (See-through Imaging, Inside Imaging, Spectro Molecular, Surface Imaging, Microscopy, Light Therapy, Analytical Sensing, and Biosensors): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030." According to the report, the global biophotonics industry generated $52.17 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach $133.90 billion by 2030, witnessing a CAGR of 10.5% from 2021 to 2030. The emergence of nanotechnology, R&D activities in the field of optics, and surge in use of biophotonic devices for medical & nonmedical purposes drive the growth of the global biophotonics market. However, high cost of equipment restrains the market growth. Contrarily, the use of biophotonics in non-medical sectors is expected to present opportunities for the market. The Medical Diagnostics S...

In a new study appearing in the Journal of Biophotonics, researchers have found that 670 nanometers (nm) of red light stimulated energy production within mitochondria, leading to increased consumption of glucose. In particular, it led to a 27.7% reduction in blood glucose levels following glucose intake, and it reduced maximum glucose spiking by 7.5%. While the study was conducted in healthy individuals, the non-invasive, non-pharmacological technique has the potential to have an impact on diabetes control after meals, as it can reduce damaging fluctuations of blood glucose in the body that contribute to aging. The study also highlights the significant long-term consequences for human health, including the potential dysregulation of blood sugars posed by lengthy exposure to blue light. Given the prominence of LED lighting and the fact that LEDs emit towards the blue end of the spectrum with very little red, the authors suggest that this may be a potential public health issue. Mitoch...

Researchers from Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) and Keio University have found a way to create artificial blood vessels in miniature organ models in a quick and reproducible manner. The method utilizes ultrashort laser pulses in the femtosecond range to write highly 3D structures into a hydrogel. In biomedical research, organs-on-a-chip are becoming increasingly important: By cultivating tissue structures in precisely controlled microfluidic chips, it is possible to conduct research much more accurately than in experiments involving living humans or animals. However, there has been a major obstacle: such mini-organs are incomplete without blood vessels. To facilitate systematic studies and ensure meaningful comparisons with living organisms, a network of perfusable blood vessels and capillaries must be created — in a way that is precisely controllable and reproducible. “We can create channels spaced only a hundred micrometers apart. That’s essential when you would like to...

Twisted moiré photonic crystals — an advanced type of optical metamaterial — have shown enormous potential in the race to engineer smaller, more capable, and more powerful optical systems. In twisted moiré photonic crystals, how the layers twist and overlap can change how the material interacts with light. By changing the twist angle and the spacing between layers, these materials can be fine-tuned to control and manipulate different aspects of light simultaneously — meaning the multiple optical components typically needed to simultaneous measure light’s phase, polarization, and wavelength could be replaced with one device. However, researchers have been unable to integrate twisted moiré photonic crystals into devices that can actively control the twist and distance between layers in real time, severely limiting their application. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with Stanford University and the ...

Leica Microsystems has acquired ATTO-TEC GmbH, a specialty supplier of fluorescent dyes and reagents. The addition of dyes and reagents for sample preparation complements the Leica portfolio of microscopy imaging platforms and advanced AI-based analysis software. TTO-TEC’s dyes, antibody labeling kits, labeled phospholipids, and other reagents are used in fluorescence microscopy imaging and can be a key advantage for reliable results, such as in high-plex 3D experiments in cancer research, according to Annette Rinck, president of Leica Microsystems. The acquisition is expected to provide ATTO-TEC with additional resources to aid in future developments of the product portfolio. “Direct access to knowledge of subsequent imaging and analysis steps leads to new approaches in developing assays, kits, and dyes optimized for the entire workflow,” said Jörg Reichwein, CEO of ATTO-TEC. According to a press release from Leica Microsystems, ATTO-TEC products will remain available through its e...

A research team from Chalmers University of Technology has introduced a new amplifier that allows the transmission of ten times more data per second than those in current fiber optic systems. The amplifier, which fits on a small chip, holds potential for various critical laser systems, including those used in medical diagnostics and treatment. To ensure that information maintains a high quality and is not overwhelmed by noise, optical amplifiers are essential. The data transmission capacity of an optical communication system is largely determined by the amplifier's bandwidth, which refers to the range of light wavelengths it can handle. “The amplifiers currently used in optical communication systems have a bandwidth of approximately 30 nanometers. Our amplifier, however, boasts a bandwidth of 300 nanometers, enabling it to transmit ten times more data per second than those of existing systems,” said lead author and professor of photonics Peter Andrekson. The new amplifier, ma...