Cassio Mendes Fontes

Journal article Adv Sci (Weinh) · October 2025 Biomaterials can improve cancer immunotherapies by controlling their release and thereby optimizing their time-dependent engagement of the immune system. In this study, an approach is described to control the release of a potent immunostimulant-CpG oligode ... Full text Link to item Cite

Synthetic biomolecular condensates enhance translation from a target mRNA in living cells.

Journal article Nat Chem · March 2025 Biomolecular condensates composed of proteins and RNA are one approach by which cells regulate post-transcriptional gene expression. Their formation typically involves the phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins with a target mRNA, sequesteri ... Full text Link to item Cite

Environmentally Resilient Microfluidic Point-of-Care Immunoassay Enables Rapid Diagnosis of Talaromycosis.

Journal article ACS Sens · June 23, 2023 Point-of-care tests (POCTs) are increasingly being used in field settings, particularly outdoors. The performance of current POCTs─most commonly the lateral flow immunoassay─can be adversely affected by ambient temperature and humidity. We developed a self ... Full text Link to item Cite

COVID-19 Diagnosis and SARS-CoV-2 Strain Identification by a Rapid, Multiplexed, Point-of-Care Antibody Microarray.

Journal article Anal Chem · April 4, 2023 Antigen tests to detect SARS-CoV-2 have emerged as a promising rapid diagnostic method for COVID-19, but they are unable to differentiate between variants of concern (VOCs). Here, we report a rapid point-of-care test (POC-T), termed CoVariant-SPOT, that us ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Smartphone Enabled Point-of-Care Detection of Serum Biomarkers.

Journal article Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · January 2022 Sandwich immunoassays are the gold standard for detection of protein analytes. Here, we describe an ultrasensitive point-of-care sandwich immunoassay platform for the detection of biomarkers directly from blood or serum using a custom-built smartphone dete ... Full text Cite

Multiplexed, quantitative serological profiling of COVID-19 from blood by a point-of-care test.

Journal article Sci Adv · June 2021 Highly sensitive, specific, and point-of-care (POC) serological assays are an essential tool to manage coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Here, we report on a microfluidic POC test that can profile the antibody response against multiple severe acute resp ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ultrasensitive point-of-care immunoassay for secreted glycoprotein detects Ebola infection earlier than PCR.

Journal article Sci Transl Med · April 7, 2021 Ebola virus (EBOV) hemorrhagic fever outbreaks have been challenging to deter due to the lack of health care infrastructure in disease-endemic countries and a corresponding inability to diagnose and contain the disease at an early stage. EBOV vaccines and ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Ultrabright Fluorescence Readout of an Inkjet-Printed Immunoassay Using Plasmonic Nanogap Cavities.

Journal article Nano letters · June 2020 Fluorescence-based microarrays are promising diagnostic tools due to their high throughput, small sample volume requirements, and multiplexing capabilities. However, their low fluorescence output has limited their implementation for in vitro diagnos ... Full text Cite

In Pursuit of Zero 2.0: Recent Developments in Nonfouling Polymer Brushes for Immunoassays.

Journal article Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · January 2020 "Nonfouling" polymer brush surfaces can greatly improve the performance of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) assays due to the reduction of nonspecific protein adsorption and consequent improvement of signal-to-noise ratios. The development of synthetic polymer br ... Full text Cite

Architectural Modification of Conformal PEG-Bottlebrush Coatings Minimizes Anti-PEG Antigenicity While Preserving Stealth Properties.

Journal article Adv Healthc Mater · April 2019 Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), a linear polymer known for its "stealth" properties, is commonly used to passivate the surface of biomedical implants and devices, and it is conjugated to biologic drugs to improve their pharmacokinetics. However, its antigenic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Engineering the Surface Properties of a Zwitterionic Polymer Brush to Enable the Simple Fabrication of Inkjet-Printed Point-of-Care Immunoassays.

Journal article Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · February 2019 Motivated by the lack of adventitious protein adsorption on zwitterionic polymer brushes that promise low noise and hence high analytical sensitivity for surface-based immunoassays, we explored their use as a substrate for immunoassay fabrication by the in ... Full text Cite

Inkjet-printed point-of-care immunoassay on a nanoscale polymer brush enables subpicomolar detection of analytes in blood.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · August 22, 2017 The ELISA is the mainstay for sensitive and quantitative detection of protein analytes. Despite its utility, ELISA is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and infrastructure-dependent, limiting its availability in resource-limited regions. Here, we describe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) Brushes on High-κ Metal Oxide Dielectric Surfaces for Bioelectrical Environments.

Journal article ACS applied materials & interfaces · February 2017 Advances in electronics and life sciences have generated interest in "lab-on-a-chip" systems utilizing complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuitry for low-power, portable, and cost-effective biosensing platforms. Here, we present a simple and ... Full text Cite