Optofluidic Tissue Lasers: Potential Applications for Biomedicine

Optofluidic bio-lasers are an emerging technology for next generation biochemical detection and clinical applications. Recent advances has been made to achieve lasing from biomolecules and single living cells. Tissues, which consist of cells embedded in extracellular matrix, mimic more closely the actual complex biological environment in a living body and therefore are of more practical significance in medicine. In this talk, I will introduce the current implementations of “optofluidic tissue lasers”, including lasing from human whole blood and cancer tissue biopsies. Distinct and controllable laser emissions from tissues thus enable highly multiplexed detection of tissues, which opens a door to a plethora of biomedical applications in bio-imaging with superior contrast and high spectral/spatial resolution. Finally, discussion and outlook is made on the strategies to differentiate/monitor various diseases through tissue lasers and to pioneer novel on-chip devices for future clinical diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy.