Signal enhancement in immunofluorescence via polydopamine deposition

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2018Current achievements in biomedical science rely on the development and improvement of contemporary technologies. Therefore, in the context of biomedical detection, there's a growing need for researching technologies with escalated sensitivity and precision, high speed, low cost, and multiplexing capacity. For instance, immunofluorescence has been a powerful tool providing valuable, high dimensional information from biomarkers of interest in patients' biopsy for decades. However, traditional immunofluorescence labeling lacks adjustability for signal amplification, thus its application has been largely limited in visualizing targets with sufficient abundance above detection limit of the assay. In this report, we described the development of a polydopamine-based immunofluorescence technology, which localize targets of interest in a rapid and multiplexed manner, along with amplification potency for target with low abundance. In summary, the work demonstrated in this report provides a possible solution for rare target multiplexed detection and a strong evidence for its potential to be adapted into clinical applications