Next-generation Fluorescence Emitters for Bioimaging Applications
We have developed bright, stable fluorescent dyes for all fluorescence imaging techniques. The dyes have narrow emission spectra and long fluorescence lifetimes to benefit multiplex imaging and lifetime measuring techniques.
Watch our short explainer video below to understand more
about our technology and how it may benefit you.
Advantages
The materials have a number of properties which are desirable for a range of bioimaging techniques.
There are several specific use cases where our materials have key advantages over existing fluorophores, namely time gated luminescence microscopy (TGLM) and fluorescent lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM).
Long Lifetime
Existing long lifetime reagents use either phosphorescent dyes containing the noble metals such as iridium, rhenium or ruthenium, or quantum dots containing toxic cadmium. In contrast, our new materials exhibit long emission lifetimes (> 1μs), are bright, and are metal-free organic molecules.
FLIM
Fluorescent lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) provides significant information about cells by combining visualisation of cell structure based on the localisation of luminescent materials, combined with information about the cell environment based on changes in the emission lifetime of the dye based on interaction between the fluorescent dye and the contents of the cells.
TADF
In contrast to established luminescent dyes used in bioimaging, our materials emit light through a process called Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence (TADF). This results in materials with very bright, long lifetime emission.
Our Team
Professor
Eli Zysman-Colman
Prof. Eli Zysman-Colman obtained his Ph.D. from McGill University in 2003 under the supervision of Prof. David N. Harpp as an FCAR scholar, conducting research in physical organic sulfur chemistry. He then completed two postdoctoral fellowships, one in supramolecular chemistry with Prof. Jay Siegel at the Organic Chemistry Institute, University of Zurich as an FQRNT fellow and the other in photoactive inorganic materials chemistry with Prof. Stefan Bernhard at Princeton University as a PCCM fellow. He joined the department of chemistry at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada as an assistant professor in 2007. In 2013, he moved to the University of St Andrews in St Andrews, UK, where he is presently Professor of Optoelectronic Materials, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a past holder of a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship. He is CEO of the spin-out company, SoLOLED, which has raised over £500k in non-dilutive funding.
Professor Marc Vendrell
Marc studied at the University of Barcelona, where he received his B.Sc. in Chemistry in 2001 and his Master Degree in Organic Chemistry in 2002. In 2007 he obtained his Ph.D. for his thesis in the combinatorial synthesis of peptide-heterocycle hybrids as multivalent GPCR ligands. After working at the Combinatorial Chemistry Unit in the Barcelona Science Park as a Research Associate, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (2007-2012) in the application of fluorescent molecules for non-invasive optical imaging, under the supervision of Prof. Young-Tae Chang. ln 2012, Marc started his independent career as an MRC Academic Fellow in the MRC CIR (University of Edinburgh) to develop new optical imaging probes with clinical application. In 2023, he was the recipient of the RSC Bader prize for “The design and synthesis of activatable fluorophores, and their application in high-resolution biological imaging and translational medicine.”
Dr. Campbell Mackenzie
Dr. Campbell Mackenzie is an experienced chemist with 10 years of research experience in organic electronics and optically active materials. After completing his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Western Australia, held a number of laboratory manager and computational chemistry positions before moving to St Andrews to undertake post-doctoral work on optically active materials with Prof. Eli Zysman-Colman.
Dr. Tomas Matulaitis
Dr. Tomas Matulaitis studied at the Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, obtaining a BSc in Chemistry in 2011. In 2018 he received his PhD in Materials Engineering from Kaunas University of Technology for his thesis on the design of new luminescent materials for OLEDs. Since 2018 he has been working as postdoctoral research Fellow in the Group of Professor Eli Zysman-Colman at the University of St Andrews developing new emissive materials for OLED and bioimaging applications.
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