# Phenotypic assay for drug discovery and personalized medicine based on real-time vibrational spectroscopy enhanced by plasmonic metasurfaces

> **NIH NIH R21** · CORNELL UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $598,729

## Abstract

Abstract
The goal of this research is to develop a new spectroscopic technique – Time-dependent Infrared Reflection
Spectroscopy Assay (TIRSA) – that will enable us to measure the real-time spectral response of a cell to
various pharmacological compounds. The uniqueness of TIRSA is that it exploits infrared-reflective plasmonic
(gold) metasurfaces to detect, as a function of time, biochemical changes in close proximity of cellular
membranes, as well as cytoskeleton reorganization occurring. The optical spectra obtained over the course of
several hours after administering the drug will be used to identify its effects on signaling pathways without any
labels because vibrational fingerprints of biomolecules are the natural labels. Unlike time-consuming cytotoxic
assays, the TIRSA can be potentially as short as several hours, thereby addressing one of the most serious
deficiencies of phenotypic assays: their low throughput. Powerful techniques of machine learning (ML) will be
used to process the enormous amount of biochemical information obtained by TIRSA, and to conduct
supervised and unsupervised data analysis that will be based on large libraries of spectral cellular responses
to single-target chemical compounds such as kinase inhibitors and others. New laser-based hardware for
TIRSA will enable high sensitivity, time and space resolution.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10025960
- **Project number:** 1R21CA251052-01
- **Recipient organization:** CORNELL UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Gennady Shvets
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $598,729
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-08-15 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10025960

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10025960, Phenotypic assay for drug discovery and personalized medicine based on real-time vibrational spectroscopy enhanced by plasmonic metasurfaces (1R21CA251052-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10025960. Licensed CC0.

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