BU, UC Davis to create Center for Biophotonics

Researchers from the Boston University Photonics Center and the University of California, Davis Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology are launching a new Center for Biophotonic Sensors and Systems in late April, after receiving an award from the National Science Foundation.

The new center’s research is expected to lead to commercial benefits such as disease diagnosis, drug efficacy testing, patient drug effectiveness monitoring and advances in food and water safety, according to a press release on the Photonics Center website.

BUPC Director Thomas Bifano said that because of the grant’s industry cooperative component, the partnering universities have invited members of the health care industry to the program’s kick-off meeting on April 28 and 29 to discuss their projects.

BUPC Assistant Director Thomas Dudley said he estimates that in the course of five years the center could receive at least $1.25 million in funding from the NSF and companies from the industry.

The CBSS program proposal predicts that the industrial component will include pharmaceutical companies, national and local laboratories, as well as companies that specialize in medical devices used for diagnosis and monitoring of diseases.

The variety of companies expected to monitor the program’s research are “coalescing around common interest in biophotonics technology,” Bifano said. “Not only do they get to interact with academic programs at BU and UC Davis, but they also get to interact with companies at other stages of the food chain.”

For the last 15 years, the Photonics Center at BU has executed similar prototyping with defense partners, Bifano said. However, many of the findings from defense research were applicable to the health care field.

“We had the people and the skill set to confer them, but not the program,” Bifano said. The health care field’s strong presence in both the northeast and in California presents a high level of industrial interest in both campuses’ research.

“Biophotonics allows for non-invasive or minimally-invasive diagnosis and therapy, ” said Dennis Matthews, the director of the center at UC Davis. The wide range of wavelengths it relies on “means there are many effects that have yet to be discovered, studied and applied, and it could lead to less costly medical devices.”

Matthews added that the grant is “very exciting because it will allow scientists from two established photonics centers to work with colleagues from industry on projects of common interest.”

The center’s mission is to advance biophotonic sensor technology, to increase the quantity and quality of professionals prepared to work in the field and to solve unmet needs in the health care sector using biophotonic-sensing solutions.