In-situ p53 protein detection based on a micro Bragg fiber grating and the optical wavelength meter measurement

Abstract

As a typical tumor suppressor and transcription factor in cancer biology, p53 protein is involved in DNA repair, the cell cycle regulation and programmed cell death. The p53 protein in human blood can be linked with tissue alterations for more than 50% human cancer, and its concentration can be used for early-stage cancer diagnostics and related risk assessments. In this work, we demonstrated a high resolution biomedical sensor. It is based on a micro Bragg fiber grating (mFBG) as a sensing probe to form lasing in a fiber laser ring resonant cavity. It is able to detect the p53 protein by measuring the fiber laser wavelength via the optical wavelength meter (OWM). Compared with the traditional sensing system based on the full-spectrum measurement, a higher signal-to-noise ratio and more stable output can be obtained, which improves the wavelength resolution and measurement speed. The optical fiber biomedical sensor successfully maintains its specificity for p53 protein, and has a promising application in clinical oncology diagnosis.