(provided by candidate): Candidate: Dr. Edward Eteshola's long term career goal is to become an independent investigator in advanced biomaterials and biosensor development research for biomedical and biotechnological applications. His immediate objective through this Career Development Award proposal is to acquire new training and skills in advanced modern protein engineering methodologies to generate novel engineered biomaterials for biosensor surface and interface design to enable this goal. He has designed a career development plan that incorporates modern advances in biomolecular engineering to prepare novel interfacial biomaterials for the rational design and fabrication of functional affinity sensor surfaces/interfaces. Environment: The rich research environment at the Ohio State University, Columbus is ideal for the candidate's career development; there are several successful units with extramurally funded researchers in the areas of protein engineering, immunology, biochemistry, surface and interface science. Dr. Eteshola will be mentored by Drs. Lee and Brillson. Drs. Lee and Brillson are expert protein engineer and materials surface scientist, respectively. Their combined labs will provide excellent environments for developing the skills necessary to successfully execute the details of this proposal. Research: Biochemically modified field-effect transistor (BioFET) based systems are intended to detect and quantitate charge carrying biomolecules (e.g., proteins) in a label-free manner, i.e. without need for reporter molecules. Although, these affinity BioFET sensors have reportedly been used to detect DNA hybridization reactions, detection of proteins by this method has yet to be achieved on a practical level. A main reason for this difficulty is that the large size of the surface bound receptor proteins prevents the target ligands from approaching FET sensing channel sufficiently closely for efficient detection of change in surface electrical charge properties following receptor-ligand binding event occurring on the sensor device. This application proposes a novel approach for the bio/engineering and fabrication of FET sensor surfaces/interfaces at the molecular level by engineering novel interfacial biomolecules with desirable biochemical and physical characteristics (small size, selectivity, novel binding properties) specifically adapted for use in FET sensor device environment; this approach is expected to greatly improve interfacial interaction phenomena, and thus improved signal transduction, resulting in the realization of more specific, sensitive and stable BioFET sensor devices. The success of this project could have significant impact not only in realizing novel biosensor technologies but as well in the broader fields of MEMS micro- and nano-devices, bioengineered coatings for implantable devices, tissue engineering scaffolds, etc. where surface/interface phenomena are critically important.
